ROCK OF EXILE A NARRATIVE OF TRISTAN DA CUNHA

OTHER DEVIN-ADAIR BOOKS

HAITI: THE BLACK REPUBLIC by Selden Rodman

A Study of Haiti and the Haitians, in word and photograph, from the
time of discovery to the present. A complete guide book with travel
information and language hints. 48 pages of illustrations. $5.00

TAHITI: Voyage Through Paradise by George T. Eggleston

The thrilling account of a 1000-mile small-boat passage among the
fabulous Society Islands. Each of the islands, in addition to Rarotonga
in the Cook group, is a separate and unique experience. The 100 pages
of beautifully reproduced photographs, the Tahitian glossary, and the
tips for prospective visitors make this one of the most extraordinary
travel books of the Pacific ever offered. $7.50

IRISH FOLK WAYS by E. Estyn Evans

From information gathered in conversations up and down Ireland, as
well as from a thorough study of archeology, geology and the litera-
ture, Ireland*fe foremost anthropologist describes the customs, beliefs
and traditions of the Irish in terms 'of their arts, crafts and artifacts.
Many illustrations. * $6.50

DIG FOR PIRATE TREASURE by Robert I. Nesmith

This is an authentic and reliable account of a fascinating subject by
one of the world's leading authorities. It tells about known treasure
waiting to be discovered, about people who are finding treasure, and
about pirates "and buccaneers. It tells how to hunt for treasure and
how to appraise it. Illustrated. $6.00

HP CALIFORNIA by Duncan Gleason

C

^ 101 553 .__!!

the fastest-growing state in America, and gives helpful tips to yacE
men. tt $8.50

Send for oar catalogue

THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
23 East 26th Street New York 10, N. Y.

ROCK OF
EXILE

A Narrative of
Tristan da Cunha

by D. M. BOOY

This is the story of a remote island in the
South Atlantic and the people who live
there, twelve hundred miles from any-
where and almost completely cut off from
the rest of the world.

The 2OO rather shy individuals who live
on Tristan da Ounha speak a mixture of
Cockney and Southern Negro dialect and
are descended from a boatload of British
sailors who were stationed there with their
wives in 1816 in order to circumvent the
possible escape of Napoleon Bonaparte
from St. Helena. An occasional shipwreck
since then has infused the colony with

fresh blood and furnished some of that

most prized commodity., wood for housing.

How this tiny colony lives today — -with-
out laws yet without crime, without church
or school but with a deep respect for tra-

{continued on back flap^)

THE DEVIIM-ADAIR COMPANY
23 East 26th Street New York 1O

Kansas city nil public library

kansas city, missouri

Books will be issued only

Please report lost cards and

change of residence promptly.
Card holders are responsible for

all books, records, films, pictures
or other library materials
checked out on their cards.

ROCK OF EXILE

A Narrative of Tristan da Cunha

by
D. M. BOOY

illustrated with
Jrfteen pages of photographs ,
and drawings by

E. J. FOSTER

THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY

New York 1958

Copyright <£> 1957, 1958 by
O, M. BOOY

All rights reserved. No portion

of this book may be reproduced

in any form without tvritten

permission from the publishers.,

The Devin-Adair Company

23 East 26th Street, Netv York 1O,

except by a r&ui&uoery tvho may quote

brief passages in connection -with a review.

Canadian agents: Thomas Nelson <6- Sons, Ltd.,, Toronto
Library of Congress Catalog card number: 53—9752
Manufactured in the United States of America

Four

amcl

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For permission to include the map on pages 8—9 and, unless
otherwise acknowledged, photographs from his collection I
wish to thank Mr Allan Crawford — now Lieut. Crawford
of the South African Navy and Welfare Officer to Tristan da
Cunha — who was "with me on the island during the war.

CONTENTS

1. A Spot on the Map ....... i

2 . A Rock in the Sea . . . . . . .11

3. Worlds Apart . „ . . . . . .19

4. Dance of Welcome . . . . . „ .25-

5. On the Shelf 3 !

6. Alone with the Past ....... 36

7. An Exile's Home ....... 42

8 . A Year Begins ........ 49

9. Meet the Elders ....... ^6

10. The Spinning-wheel . . . . . . .66

n. Unfriendly Neighbour . . . . „ -73

12. The Wheel of Fortune . ..... 83

13. The Workaday Week . ...... 88

14. The Weekly Custom ....... 95-

15. The Lamp of Learning . . . . . . 101

1 6. A New Grave . . . . . . . .106

17. Holding the Fort . . . . . . . in

1 8 . Work in the Sun . . . . . . .116

1 9 . Love in the Shade . . . . . . .121

20. Fireside Topics . . . . . . . .126

21. The Cold Grip ........ 134

22. The Echoing Cry . . . . . . .139

23. Open Hearth ........ 147

24. Wild Pursuit . . . . . . . .154

25-. Season of Spite . . . . . . . .162

26. The Sea's Bounty . . . . . . .168

27. Scraping Cards . . » . . . . .173

28. Time to Go . . . . . . . .179

29. Day of Departure . . . . . . .18^

30. Past and Present . . . . . . .191

ix

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

Tristan from the North-east
The Author

Building a house

Old Sam Swain
Mrs Repetto
A * carding' party
A bullock * train'
Island boats

Boat-building

Boat-painting

Ready for launching

Marie, an island girl

The Patches

Donkeys

A Rockhopper penguin

Hauling a boat up the beach
Wife greets husband
Edinburgh settlement
The Duke of Edinburgh
going ashore

Tom Swain

Two island families

A Tristan child of to-day

Tristan da Cunha

between pages 20 & 21
between pages 52 & 53

between pages 84 & 85

between pages 116 & 117

MAP

between pages 132 & 133

between pages 164 & 165

pages 8-9

XI

SOUTH

vAMERICA

TfitSTAN
da

CUNHA

CHAPTER ONE

A Spot on the Map

WE FACED adventure with grim reluctance. The spirit of
Drake, if it was present at all in our little party, quailed before
the chill, dank breath of the South Atlantic.

Under the darkened coast of the Cape Peninsula we waited on
a jetty in Simon's Bay. The day had glowed with promise of
spring; but the night was clenched and raw, an unhealed wound
of winter. Tiny hopes, hatched in our hearts by the African
sun, dropped dead at dusk like ephemeral flies. Waves broke
along the shore with a dismal crash, and the ebbing water clucked
sadly under the sea- walk.

We waited for an unknown ship bound westward from the
Cape. Against the pale expanse of harbour the masts and rigging
of moored vessels stood up in hard, black lines. A sombre,
mellow half-light lingered over the bay, as if constrained to share
our vigil — waiting for the ship that would carry us into exile.

Months previously, in an Admiralty office, a map had been
unrolled; a mere spot had marked the position of an island,
British property; a pointing finger from a gilt-ringed sleeve had
commanded the establishment there of an outpost, its purpose

2 ROCK OF EXILE

officially veiled. And so we, a dozen names on a naval draft-list,
had been given our destination — & desolate rock in the southern
ocean, inhabited already by a strange colony of people lost to the
world.

We waited in silence. The mountains, like humpbacked
monsters, crouched around the bay to watch our departure.
Under their flanks, the gleaming track of the electric railway
threaded a chain of little towns, following the arc of the surf,
then swerved away across the dark Flats — * Alle Stasies na Kaap-
stad* : it was a line we had often travelled.

Occasionally, from the doorway of the Africa Station Club,
just outside the dockyard gates, came a jagged shaft of light and
noise. Inside, not more than an hour before, in the atmosphere
of smoke, laughter, and slopped beer, we had taken our last drink
ashore with friends whom we should probably never meet again.
Now, among kit-bags, hammocks, and chests, we stood or paced
on thd jetty — another pointing finger that dismissed us with
peremptory gesture to try the hospitality of sea-birds and the
company of castaways.

We had heard confusing tales about those inhabitants. Some
said they were white, that they spoke English, and were friendly;
others said they were mad and best left alone.

The first settlers had been British. They had been joined by
others, men and women of many nationalities, survivors of ship-
wreck, recluses, and voluntary exiles, who through several
generations had continued the colony. They proclaimed them-
selves members of the British Empire. But they lived in a world
and time of their own, preserving the customs and dress of the
early settlers. Their only visitors were whaling ships and
explorers far from the regular sea-routes. They could know
nothing of our way of life ; and we knew nothing of theirs . Until
recently most of us had not even heard of the island called
Tristan da Cunha.

Like our august superiors in the Admiralty office we had con-
sulted a map. Ours was on a page of a small red atlas. It

A SPOT ON THE MAP 3

showed the whole of Africa and a large blue area of South
Atlantic Ocean.

Several pairs of eyes roved the empty sea spaces at the left side
of the page, until a cry — * There it is! ' — announced our landfall:
a tiny speck between the ten- and twenty-degree lines of longi-
tude. It just managed to edge on to the same page as the
continent of Africa. On a map of the world at the front of the
atlas the dot appeared almost as near to South America as to South
Africa, and a pencil-line ruled from Cape Town to Montevideo
passed a little above it.

Almost in the Roaring Forties !

We gazed at it for a long time with mingled awe and misgiving.
Its smallness was appalling. It looked like a fly about to land on
the giant profile of Africa.

One member of the party tried drawing a ring round it — to
make it look bigger.

From the South Atlantic Sailing Directory we acquired facts,
but learned little.

Tristan da Cunha is the largest and only inhabited island of a
group of three lying far south in the Atlantic — about i ,200 miles
south of St Helena, 1,500 miles west of the Cape of Good Hope,
and i , 800 miles from the coast of Uruguay.

Its closest neighbour is Gough Island, 2^0 miles to the
south-west. That is uninhabited. Tristan da Cunha is farther
from the nearest populated land than any other island in the
world.

It covers thirty square miles, but most of it is uninhabitable — •
an extinct volcano rising to a peak of 6,760 feet above the sea.
The other components of the group are Inaccessible Island, eight-
een miles to the south-west, and Nightingale Island, twenty miles
to the south. These are occupied by birds.

History told a story as bizarre as the travellers' tales. The
island was discovered in 1^06 by a Portuguese admiral, Tristao
(or Tristan) d'Acunha (or da Cunha), who gave it his name and
handed it back to the seals and sea-birds. For two centuries

4 ROCK OF EXILE

afterwards it was forgotten, snoring in its foam. In the eigh-
teenth century it was remembered by sealers, whalers, and
pirates. Belonging to one of these classes, probably the last, was
Jonathan Lambert of Salem, who landed there in 1 8 1 o with two
of his shipmates, one an American called Williams, the other
half English, half Italian named Thomas Currie. Lambert pro-
claimed himself king of the three islands and rechristened them
the Islands of Refreshment. The name survived until Lambert
and Williams died — or rather disappeared: what happened to
them was known only to Thomas Currie, who lived on as ruler
and solitary inhabitant of the islands.

In 1 8 1 6 a garrison of soldiers was sent from South Africa to
prevent any attempt by way of Tristan da Cunha to rescue the
exiled Napoleon from St Helena. The soldiers found there a
castaway who called himself simply Italian Thomas. He said
that he had lived on the island for six years — alone. Questioned
about Lambert and Williams, he admitted that they had been
there but said they had been drowned while out fishing.

At the garrison canteen Thomas became drunk daily, spending
handfuls of gold from some hidden store. When drunk, he
made lurid allusions to the disappearance of Lambert and Williams
and boasted of the treasure he had, buried in a chest which he
and his shipmates had brought ashore. The soldiers flattered
him, plied him with more and more drink. He hinted that
he would disclose the hiding-place to the man who pleased him
most. One day, primed with rum to the verge of revelation,
surrounded by a tense audience, he lifted his arm to point and
fell dead. The soldiers dug and searched and grovelled, but
found nothing.

A year later, when the world began to outgrow its dread
of the vanquished emperor, the garrison was -recalled from
Tristan.

Perhaps it was a lingering hope of finding the treasure ; perhaps
it was a weariness of the world or the desire for a life of rudi-
mentary hardship; perhaps it was the possession of a brown-
skinned wife and two coffee-coloured children, that made

A SPOT ON THE MAP $

William Glass of Kelso, a Scots corporal in the Royal Artillery,
beg permission to remain behind on the island with his family.
Two other men, Samuel Burnell and John Nankivel, stayed with
him for a while, but subsequently left. It was William Glass
who in 1 8 1 7 founded the colony of Tristan cfc Cunha.

During the era of sailing ships Glass's settlement was aug-
mented by survivors of the many wrecks on Tristan and its
neighbour, Inaccessible Island. Even when the captains of other
vessels offered passage away from the rock many of the castaways
preferred to stay there . Whaling ships often called in those days ,
and sailors deserted from them or were set ashore at their own
request to join the growing community, of which Corporal Glass
was now called Governor.

Their worst hardship was loneliness. The other settlers
envied Glass his wife and children. At last, in 1 827 — against the
advice of their much-married governor — they persuaded a certain
Captain Ham, of the sloop Luke of Gloucester, to bring them some
women from St Helena, their nearest inhabited neighbour. One
man, Thomas Swain, vowed that he would have the first who
stepped ashore. When the sloop returned she carried five
women, all volunteers to join these men they had never seen.
Four of them were mulatto girls; the fifth was an elderly,
widowed Negress accompanied by four children. Tom Swain
was held to his vow: it was the old Negress who led the way
ashore.

These women, with the wife of Governor Glass, were the only
coloured settlers in the history of Tristan. Many more men
joined the colony, all of European race — British, American,
Danish, German, and Dutch. They greatly outnumbered the
women. The language adopted as common was English, though
the accents must have made a strange medley.

Almost the only crop grown there was potatoes. These and
fish formed the mainstay of the islanders' subsistence. As the
visits of the whaling ships, on which the settlement depended for
barter, became less frequent, life involved constant privation.

6 ROCK OF EXILE

Once a vessel called at the island and found the population facing
starvation because of the failure of the potato crop ; no ship had
been sighted during the previous three years.

From the eighteen-fifties onward missionaries were sent out at
irregular intervals by the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel. The ministers usually stayed for periods of three to six
years, and ensured a modicum of education for the children.
But there were long spells when the settlement had no clergyman,
when marriages, christenings, and funerals had to be solemnized
by Governor Glass or one of the successive headmen and the
children derived their only education from their parents.

In 1 8 8 £ came disaster. Fifteen of the able-bodied men put out
in their lifeboat to a ship, hoping to barter for much-needed
provisions. Some of the watchers on the beach afterwards
declared that the boat had been overwhelmed by a heavy sea just
before reaching the ship ; others maintained that they had seen the
men taken on board and that the vessel had immediately got under
way again, taking the islanders. The village was left the home of
widows and children and four men. At the time there were
nineteen families, some with as many as seven young children.
Of the remaining men, one — Peter Green, the headman — was
seventy-nine ; another, Andrew Hagan, was sixty-seven ; the third
had gone mad and was tormenting the village ; the fourth was the
only able-bodied man to defend it.

Somehow the settlement survived. The children grew up, the
boys learned early in their lives to do the work of men. Many
of the families which had emigrated from the island after the death
of Governor Glass returned, disillusioned with the outer world.
Further shipwrecks brought new blood, including Italian. Again
the population increased; and again, as in the early days, there
were more men than women. At the time of our setting out
from South Africa, in October 1942, the total population,
including children, was given as about two hundred. This
number, we gathered, was ample to offset any dangers, mental
or physical, from intermarriage. Indeed the excellent health
and physique of the islanders — and especially the remarkable

A SPOT ON THE MAP 7

soundness and whiteness of their teeth, in spite of their soft
potato diet — had become almost a legend.

We had no idea of what our reception would be. About the
present habits and conditions of the islanders we had only a few
vague notions, founded mostly on the contents of a glass case in
the public museum at Cape Town.

That case held the only material evidence for our preconcep-
tions : a pair of oxhide moccasins, the hair on the outside ; a model
of a canvas-covered boat ; a tall, old-fashioned spinning-wheel, the
kind at which the spinner had to stand, twirling the wheel by
hand; a sheepskin mat; and some stuffed penguins and molly-
mawks. We knew that the people were without the comforts of
life as we knew it and that they would have no knowledge of the
mechanized and war-harrowed world of Europe as we had left it.
In our more sanguine moments this last fact appeared clearly as a
consolation; and the news that a small advance-party, containing a
padre, an officer surgeon, and some South African engineers, had
already gone out to the island and were in radio communication
with Simonstown, had been sufficient to buoy our spirits until
dusk marooned us on the jetty and the night wind blighted our
hopes.

Gloom, settling over the bay, invaded our hearts. A motor-
launch crept mysteriously, with engine silenced, alongside the
jetty; and, like a wraith from the water below us, appeared a
wiry, brown-faced old monkey of a seaman with faded red
badges on his arm. He was the coxswain of the launch and was to
take us out to the ship when she arrived. Some rumour of the
destination of our draft had stirred in him a malicious and ironic
humour. He said little; but his silence, after the garrulity of
well-wishers ashore, and the satirical glint of his eye hinted at a
wealth of unwelcome secrets with which he could have fore-
warned us.

We had tramped for miles up and down that jetty before we
glimpsed, behind the tracery of masts and spars in the harbour, a
new set of masts and two squat funnels creeping along. A ship

THE SETTLEMENT OF

EDINBUR&H

«K"tjp
LACKlN-f
HOLE~V

AMCHORSTOC
POINT

LONG BLUFFS

•st

Scale in Statute Miles:-

SANDY
POINT *.

'(PENGUIN ROOKERY)

37'S'

SOUTH

"STONYHILL PT.

9'.

TRISTAN PA CUNHA

FROM THE SURVEY BY ALLAN CRAWFORD, 1937-38.

10 ROCK OF EXILE

steamed slowly into the bay. We heard her anchor go down.
Under the expressive gaze of the coxswain we stowed our stores,
our kit, and ourselves aboard the launch. She nosed away from
the jetty and chugged out across the choppy water, rolling gently.

A lighter, towed out by another launch from one of the other
jetties, arrived before us, and as we came in under the tall hull of
the steamer some kaffir boys were already loading drums of oil
aboard her from the lighter. There was much shouting across
the water from them as we manoeuvred to get to the lowered
gangway. A few ghostly faces peered down over the ship's side
as we clambered up, dragging our kit. But they had disappeared
by the time we arrived on deck. The coxswain of the launch
grinned up at us a malicious farewell and from the rail we watched
his craft shoot away, churning a great arc of silver as she turned
and bounced back shorewards, the light from her hatch flaring
out across the dark water.

The ship remained oblivious of our embarkation, until at length
a little cockney steward came along, and with a jaunty 'Follow
me, mates ! ' led us to some quarters near the crew's mess. Here
we bunked, and later in the night we heard the rattle of the
anchor chain coming up and felt the roll of the ship under way.

CHAPTER TWO

A Rock in the Sea

AFTER WE left the Cape the weather changed for the worse.
Wave crests were lashed to a flying white foam. Our ship, the
Highland Chieftain ? plunged through deep swells that rolled away
beneath her like the furrows of some vast, watery ploughland.
At night the wind thrust icy fingers through the openings of oil-
skins, duffle-coats, and jerseys; the spray lacerated raw faces
buried in upturned collars. This weather continued for four
days — an ominous prelude to our adventure. Black skies sagged
with rain, and as the winds rose our spirits sank. Visibility
was limited to a low, ragged horizon, at which we stared in
gloomy question. On the fourth day we had our answer.

It was late in the afternoon of ^th October 1942. A clammy
mist rose like steam about us . Thin squalls of rain struggled with
blasts of wind. Out of the grey and tossing sea, barely a mile
away, a great dark rock lifted its head, like the barnacled brows
of some forbidding sea-monster dripping with slime.

As we approached, the rock assumed character as an island.

1 1

I 2 ROCK OF EXILE

Its peak passed out of view in sodden clouds ; the grim, seamy
sides were green in patches with a sparse carpeting of grass that
looked more like moss ; the scarred cliffs were hemmed with a
line of leaping foam, where the ocean tide raged at the obstruc-
tion. Here and there we saw high, dank crevices, choked with
vegetation, and falls of water cascading down grooves in the stony
face ; but most of the mountain was stark and barren.

This we took to be one of the two uninhabited islands of the
group, probably Inaccessible — and rightly named, it seemed, for
on the side of our approach at least there was no possible landing-
place.

We had come out of the mist from the east. Now we
changed course and rounded the northern butte of the island.
To our surprise and dismay we saw a broad beach of black
volcanic sand under the sheer wall of the mountain ; and at the
far end of it a low grassy plateau, raised above the level of the
beach like a green shelf — on which was perched a miniature
village. So this, after all, was Tristan da Cunha.

As we came in closer the little huddles of grey stone took shape
as cottages, one or two of them clearly discernible, others almost
indistinguishable from their murky background. Soon we could
see wisps of chimney smoke harried by the wind, and a flag
beating madly against a mast on top of a grassy knoll, with what
looked like a toy cannon crouching beside it.

Behind the settlement the mountain slanted steeply back and
up into the storm-clouds; in front the cliffs dropped another
hundred feet to the strip of boulder-strewn shingle that widened
in some places to a beach. A number of boats lay there, hauled
up high and dry. Where sand was visible it was black ; a bare
dune of it formed the main beach east of the ledge on which the
village stood.

The sea nearer inshore was too rough to permit a landing that
evening. Without dropping anchor, the ship steamed past the
settlement and stood out to sea again. Out of sight of the island,
in the mist and darkness, we spent the night cruising around at a
safe distance from the rock, waiting for a break in the weather.

A ROCK IN THE SEA I 3

On the following morning we came in again and this time were
able to anchor less than a mile from the shore. The sea was still
swelly but the surf appeared less frantic. Tiny figures moved on
the black beach, pushing off boats. We watched the little craft
lifting their bows to the waves, tipping over, and vanishing in the
troughs, then reappearing. For a long time they seemed to be
making no headway and to us it looked a superhuman task to pull
against such a sea. Then — almost as if the ship herself had
suddenly changed position — the boats were within hailing dis-
tance. A few minutes later the first of them was alongside, the
oarsmen warding her off from our wallowing hull.

The islanders appeared not at all disconcerted by the rough sea.
One moment the boat was right under us, her gunwale knocking
against the ship's plates, the next moment she was riding away on
a great swell, the men still clutching our rope and laughing up at
us . Several of them stood erect with careless equilibrium on the
thwarts. When the ship threatened to roll over on them, one of
the islanders would thrust the boat off again by pressing an oar
against the ship's side.

With mingled curiosity and misgiving we looked down at the
men who were to be our hosts and daily companions for months
to come. They were dressed in a motley of old and patched
garments. Many wore sailors' jumpers, white or blue, and
peaked blue caps. Their complexions ranged from markedly
swarthy to unexpectedly fair and their features were of European
cast. Without exception they were tall and muscular-looking.

We had been told that they spoke English, but the scraps of
outlandish dialect that came up to us were unintelligible. The
boatmen talked and laughed among themselves, but in a quiet,
restrained manner. Obviously they were unused to strangers.
They returned with interest our stares of barefaced curiosity, but
did not call up to us. They had none of the easy, impudent
familiarity of the natives of an African or eastern port.

In the first boat came the doctor and a petty officer of the
advance-party to meet us. They were accompanied on board by
one of the islanders, a large, heavily built man in a blue reefer

14 ROCK OF EXILE

jacket with brass buttons. When introduced to us, he dragged
a cap from his head and addressed us in a deep, powerful voice,
calling each of us 'Sir.' His accent seemed to combine elements
of Scots and Afrikaans in a strange, slow drawl. We understood
little of what he said beyond that we were welcome to the island.
His name, we learned from the petty officer, was William
Repetto and, although the men of Tristan claimed to be all equal,
he was called ' Chief. ' His father had been an Italian sailor ship-
wrecked on the island, who had made his home there and been
recognized before his death as headman.

The present Chief seemed as proud of his parentage as a high-
land clansman and solemnly conscious of the weight of his office.
Throughout our conversation he managed, in spite of his
embarrassment and his isolation within a ring of sailors on the
rocking deck of a strange ship, to preserve something of the
ponderous dignity of an ox — and a little, too, of the slow-
wittedness. But there was no sign, either in William Repetto
or in the men waiting in the boats, of the mental deficiency we
had been led by some informants to expect.

The first business was that of conveying us and our personal
belongings ashore. The doctor and the petty officer, a South
African, remained on board to direct the landing of the heavier
supplies. One by one, carrying our personal kit, we descended
the swinging Jacob's ladder into the nearest boat. Helping
hands guided us from below, but a stolid shyness precluded any
spoken word of greeting from the island men. Our presence
among them became at once an embarrassment and an object of
intense curiosity.

We found seating space in the stern-sheets, and the oarsmen —
as if by a prearranged signal outside our notice or else by some
silent mutual understanding — all gave way together and began
pulling shorewards with long, deep strokes. There appeared to
be no captain, even self-appointed, and no word of command was
uttered. It was a long time before even -the helmsman spoke;
and then it was only to give directions as to our approach to the
shore. The quiet, almost apologetic tone of his voice implied

A ROCK IN THE SEA *I $

that he was merely issuing information, nothing so presumptuous
as instructions.

For a long time we seemed to be coming no nearer to the
beach, although the ship receded farther and farther behind us.
Then the boat entered a dense tangle of that seaweed known as
kelp, with wide, undulating leaves of a dark, brownish green
that float just below the surface, and strong pale stems that rise
from a depth of fifteen fathoms or more towards the light. A
thick reef of this extraordinary growth encircles the island at a
distance of a quarter of a mile off shore. The tough, twisting
arms of the plant have some of the groping and clutching power of
tentacles.

It took us several minutes to thrust our way through the belt of
weed, the oarsmen taking short, jabbing strokes whenever
possible, each independently. When a blade became fast in the
tangle, the rower would jerk the oar sharply inboard until it was
free and then thrust it out again into the next space of clear water.
Proceeding in this haphazard fashion, rather like a gigantic water
spider with its legs weaving tentatively in the air at every step,
we threaded our way through the reef, to find ourselves in
relatively calm water and not far from the beach. Such was the
beneficial effect of the kelp, acting as a bar against the more
tumultuous seas. Instead of breaking, the waves were trans-
formed into great, swelling rollers, which bore us rapidly to the
shore.

Without any warning, in that same manner of tacit compre-
hension, all hands stopped pulling at the same stroke. The boat
was carried high by the surf and as it grounded on the shingle the
island men leapt out, grabbing the gunwale and pushing to retain
the momentum, while a rope tossed to the villagers waiting on the
beach was caught and pulled by all available hands. We too-
jumped ashore, while the boatmen, barefooted and with trousers
rolled up to their knees, waded through the ebbing surf, hauling
their craft up over the squeaking, cascading pebbles and slippery
fronds of derelict kelp.

High and dry on the beach, we stood in a hesitant group,

l6 ROCK OF EXILE

uncertain of our reception, until guidance came in the form of
a tall, black-browed young islander who introduced himself as
'Sindey' Glass. He had fierce, dark eyes and a swarthy face,
which split unexpectedly into a white, gleaming smile. 'You-
all come along of me/ he said. 'I show you-all where you
gonna live.'

Shouldering twice as much of our kit as any of us could carry,
and with half the effort, he trod quickly and lightly over the
pebbles. It was then that I noticed his shoes — oxhide moccasins
exactly like those in the museum at Cape Town. Their effect
was a shock to me: suddenly the world evoked by the strange
curios in the museum — a world only half believed in — had
become real. It was as if we had landed at Deal and been greeted
by Britons in woad and skins.

Sidney — as we suspected his name of being — led the way from
the beach up a steep, stony road towards the grassy level above.
The men below were unloading our stores, and as we climbed the
slope we saw the boat which had brought us ashore being pushed
off again, the last man leaping in as the water splashed about his
knees.

Above us, on the green knoll by the flagpole, were clustered
the women of the settlement, wearing ankle-length dresses of
white or coloured cotton, with bright kerchiefs over their
heads. They were like a colony of hens fluttering their plumes.
We had been prompted by reports in Cape Town to expect an
effusive welcome of kisses from them; but these rumours proved
as wildly untrue as most other information with which we had
been primed. We found the women silent and withdrawn,
though agog with interest. On our route up from the beach we
passed two girls of about seventeen or eighteen, stray chicks from
the hen-roost above. They were huddled against the bows of an
overturned boat, scared at their own audacity. As we passed
close to them they clung to each other in a tension of fear but
returned our gaze with wide, wondering eyes. They looked
very odd in their billowing white dresses with coloured sashes,
their dark hair drawn tightly back and partly hidden under their

A ROCK IN THE SEA IJ

headkerchiefs . Both were fair of complexion and one was attrac-
tive, mature, and plump in her youthfulness. But so still and
quiet they were, and yet so daring in their solemn-eyed curiosity.

We reached the grassy plateau and, following our dark-faced
guide, trudged along the road towards the settlement, passing
a little tower of stones in which stood a lantern — evidently a
beacon for the boats at night. The road was no more than a
track. On either side spread downy turf with outcroppings of
the native rock, and huge boulders tumbled in the short grass.
Crossing a deep, gurgling stream by a bridge constructed of
wooden beams raised at each end on blocks of stone, we came into
the village.

Most of the able-bodied population was apparently down on
the beach or on the cliff-top watching the passage of the boats to
and from the ship ; and the few islanders who had followed us kept
at a long distance. So the settlement was almost deserted. But
as we walked along the rough path between the cottages occasion-
ally a face peered furtively through a window or a bright dress
flitted through a low doorway into safe obscurity.

It was now that we became conscious of a sound that seemed to
encompass that forgotten settlement, a mournful sound, like an
endless threnody woven into the scene around us: the muffled
moaning of the surf beneath the cliffs. Its effect was to intensify
the lost, eerie silence of the place.

Directly above the cottages loomed the mountain, a disturb-
ing presence, dwarfing this precarious foothold above the sea.
About us thatched roofs glistened with raindrops and the wet
grass was a dark green. In the cottage gardens — if such one
might call mere enclosures within walls of loosely piled stones —
flourished a species of tall tussock grass, and the stiff spearheads of
Australian flax rattled in the breeze. Everything seemed odd and
still, unreal, as if suspended in time. The settlement was like a
village that had died long ago, but of which the veiled shape, like
a mirage, was preserved in the vapour of the sea, which still
murmured, as it had for age after age, night and day, its deep
monotone beneath those cliffs.

I 8 ROCK OF EXILE

These first, strained impressions of Tristan gave to our
premonitions of the months ahead an uneasy sense of being lost
and forsaken, exiled from the world. Our quarters, already
prepared on the western fringe of the village, were good; but
even about them lurked the same atmosphere of unreality. The
very blankets on our bunks, issued from naval stores at Simons-
town, had a strange sea smell to them. That odour clung to
everything on the island. It was a faint but unwholesome smell,
as of things lost in the ocean and changed by the action of the
tides. Perhaps, after all, it was only the smell of rotting kelp.

When, in the afternoon of that first day of ours on Tristan,
the ship which had brought us vanished in the haze of the western
horizon, bound for gaudy ports in South America, a mood of deep
dejection closed down on our party. The wireless communica-
tion that it was our task to maintain with the outer world seemed
a thread of connection as slender as the aerials that were to
carry it.

CHAPTER THREE

Worlds Apart

FOR THE first few weeks of our exile — as we chose to consider it —
the wind and rain conspired to keep us in that despondency which
our first impressions had produced. It was a long time before
this mood was dispelled by a closer acquaintance with islanders.
In the meantime we had an opportunity of learning a great deal
about ourselves and one another.

We were as mixed a party as any selected at random from the
Navy's files — no more and no less so. It seemed absurd that in a
company so small and isolated there should have developed at
once three distinct communities on traditional naval lines. The
segregation only further accentuated our isolation.

One group consisted of the doctor — a surgeon lieutenant-
commander — who was also commanding officer of the station;
his wife and child; a nursing sister; and the chaplain. All of
these had arrived with the advance-party. They made up the
quarter-deck society and lived a life as remote from ours as from
that of the islanders. 'Doc,' we gathered, acted not only as
doctor to all on the island but also as magistrate and general
advisor to the villagers; they, it seemed, regarded him as the

'9

20 ROCK OF EXILE

direct representative of the king, and all his goodwill could not
diminish their respectful awe. The position of the padre was
even more difficult. Previous ministers had all been civilians
supported by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
They had lived for relatively long periods on the island alone
with the islanders and had mixed with them freely. Our padre
had the virtually impossible task of combining the role of village
pastor with that of naval officer and chaplain.

The second community at 'the station' was composed of
N.C.O.S — two petty officers, a leading hand, and a storekeeper.
Aligned with them were the 'met.' staff — a sergeant and two
corporals of the South African Air Force. The sergeant was
actually an Englishman by birth, Allan Crawford, who had
previously visited Tristan as surveyor with the Norwegian
scientific expedition in 1937. Of all our company he was the
one who knew most about the island.

In the long 'bunkhouse' known as the Single Men's Quarters —
though some of the occupants had wives far away in England —
lived the rest of us, forming the third community. There were
nine operators: Ginger, Jock, Cyril, Charlie, Johnny, Ernie,
Fred, Nick, and myself. We were the most junior elements, in
every sense, of the station's complement: our average age was
about twenty. There was also 'Old' Jock, the stoker; and there
was Bill, the cook. A temporary fourth community, closely
associated with ours, was that of the 'Springboks,' the party of
South African engineers who had constructed the station. They
would soon be returning to Cape Town.

Such were the disparate elements of our outpost on Tristan.
The purpose of it was in the wireless station, from which we
passed weather reports and other more important radio traffic
to the naval base at Simonstown.

We had our hours on duty and hours off duty, organized on the
system of ship's watches; there were always some operators
listening or transmitting day and night. We had a limited
amount of other routine work at the station, cleaning quarters
and maintaining equipment. We had very little restrictive

TRISTAN FROM THE NORTH-EAST

THE AUTHOR
DERRICK MILES BOOY

WORLDS APART 2 I

discipline and no need for any. Our rig-of-the-day consisted of
sea-boots, jerseys, woollen caps, sheepskin coats, and whatever
else was warmest and most comfortable ; beards were grown by
myself and several of the other ratings.

To all appearances we led a life unrelated to naval custom
except in the handling of radio signals. Clustered together, the
quarters, mess, engine-room, store, receiving and transmitting
rooms, and the meteorological station formed a second and smaller
settlement slightly west of that of the islanders, but still remote
from it. Here, in this little world of our own, we passed
through a series of friendships, enmities, and alliances until we
arrived at that state of mutual tolerance and acceptance which
was to be the bond of our confederacy against loneliness in the
months ahead.

Arrived at this state, we were ready to learn about the villagers
and the world they lived in. Contact was difficult. The men
we met occasionally on the paths about the settlement were polite,
almost excessively so, ready like children with their 'Good
mawnin', Sah.' Now and then we exchanged a few words with
them, but they remained shy and conversation was strained. The
older people seemed friendly enough, but the younger ones,
especially the women, were too timid to permit any acquaintance.
The moment anyone of our party was seen approaching, the girls
fled to the shelter of the nearest cottage ; and as we were still
hesitant about intruding uninvited over the doorsteps we had to
consider ourselves lucky on rare occasions to surprise one of the
women into a flustered response to a greeting across a garden wall.

From the South Africans and from our own observation, as we
roamed in our off-duty periods, we learned more about the
village. It was named Edinburgh Settlement, after the Victorian
Duke of Edinburgh, who had visited it in 1867 during the royal
cruise of H.M.S. Galatea. It consisted of thirty-five tiny cottages,
rather like those of Hebridean crofters, built of rough-hewn stone
which the islanders quarried from the mountainside. These
were constructed low, to withstand the gales that were said to be

22 ROCK OF EXILE

a feature of the local climate . The roofs were disproportionately
high and steep, thatched with tussock-grass or flax, their ridges
sealed with turf sods. The few windows contained glass that, we
learned, had been cherished by succeeding generations, being
almost irreplaceable since captains no longer regarded barter as a
normal form of trade.

Most of the cottages had gardens and some of the gardens even
had flowers — pale marigolds and a few wild-looking roses just
budding. But these gardens were the exceptions : the typical one
was merely an enclosure within a dry-stone wall, with an opening
left as a gateway but hardly ever boasting a gate. It contained a
yard of tramped earth and a bed either of the tall Australian flax
or of the even taller tussock-grass. This tussock was grown for
thatching. Formerly, we were told, it had grown wild all over
the island, but now it had to be transplanted from Nightingale and
Inaccessible, where it was still abundant.

Fresh water came to the settlement by two 'watrons' —
presumably a corruption of 'waterings' — that rushed gurgling
down from the mountain to leap over the cliffs into the sea.
These streams embraced a wide, green common extending in
front of the village for about a hundred yards to the cliff- top.
Cottages were not built near the edge of the shelf. The nearest
had apparently been built by a missionary for himself: it now
stood in ruins.

Although we encountered cattle on this common and donkeys
among the cottages, we met remarkably few people. Sometimes
we saw a man riding one of the donkeys or coming from the
mountainside with an immense bundle of brushwood on his
shoulders; but somehow he was nearly always in the distance.
Such shyness appeared almost furtive, as if there were some local
secret that had to be kept from us.

Nevertheless in the end it was by the islanders that the
approach to friendship was made. It came in the person of old
Bob Glass — a direct descendant of the original settler — who
presented himself one morning, unheralded, outside our
quarters. We emerged from breakfast and there he was —

WORLDS APART 2J

standing stiffly, supported on a stick that he held tensely a little
way in front of himself and gazing ahead with the fixed stare of an
old man. He was tall and crooked and thin, like a bent bean-
stick. With his long hair and in his odd array of ill-fitting gar-
ments he looked like a guy or a scarecrow that someone had set
down outside our door during the night. Yet he had obviously
put on his best clothes in honour of the visit. Folded neatly
across his chest under his jacket was a frayed white silk scarf,
secured just below the throat with a large gilt pin. Prominent
above his breast-pocket and displayed for our inspection at the
earliest opportunity were three medals, inscribed 'Transvaal/
'Cape Colony/ and 'Orange River Colony/ Of these the old
man was inordinately proud, as visible proof that he had for a
brief period in his life experienced the 'houtside warlV

He spoke in a cracked drawl, telling us his life-story before we
had even mentioned the weather. As a young man, it appeared,
he had left the island to serve in a whaling ship and had settled
subsequently in South Africa. His recollections struck an in-
congruous note. He had made more than one visit to England
and even spoke with bizarre affection of 'the old " Empire " at
Liverpool.' In the Boer War he had, by his own account, been
personally responsible for at least one British victory. He related
with great amusement to himself how, just after that war, he had
met an Afrikaner friend of his named Pieter and had discovered
in conversation that they had both taken part in a certain engage-
ment, but on opposing sides. 'I tell 'im/ chuckled the old
islander, 'if I'd know 'e was theer I sure I would 'ad a pot at 'im/

Eventually out of his simplicity emerged the true reason for
Bob's visit. He had come to ask that, if *we-alP had any
washing to be done, we would let his wife Charlotte do some of
it. This, we sensed, was not merely an offer of generosity but a
move towards some contract. We gave a non-committal reply
and he thanked us with dignity. His name, he informed us
magnificently, was Robert Franklin Glass, but he conceded by
way of anti-climax: 'Everybawdy jest call me Bawb' — which he
pronounced with a comically elongated vowel. He assured us,

24 ROCK OF EXILE

earnestly and somewhat unnecessarily, that all the other villagers
knew him and could point out to us his cottage. We should be
welcome there at any time. He left us with a hearty laugh at his
own little joke — designed, of course, to remind us what a man of
the 'warl" he was — that we should not forget his name if we
thought of him every time we had a glass of beer in our hands.
He didn't mention where, on an island that had no alcohol, we
were likely to have the experience.

This invitation by Bob Glass was the first that we received to an
island home. Others soon followed, showing that hospitality
had been waiting only on temerity. The approach was usually
made by a husband or son, with a request from wife or mother for
the privilege of washing for us ; but it was invariably accompanied
by an invitation to the house. We divided our contracts among
several families, so that each of us became assured of the services
of a private laundry. No reference was made to payment ; and as
there was then no currency on the island we were left wondering
how to repay these services. But not indefinitely: when they
came to know us better, the island women found a host of ways of
exacting their reward. As their shyness waned their demands
waxed. Almost anything that we were able to supply from our
store — and many things that we could not — they were in need of:
tea and sugar for the housewives, tobacco for the men, sweets for
the children, and a quite impossible flow of presents for the
grown-up daughters. However, it was many weeks before that
stage of intimacy was reached.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dance of Welcome

OUR FIRST opportunity of seeing the islanders en masse since they
had gathered on the heach at our arrival came after we had been
several weeks at the settlement. A village dance was held partly
to welcome us and partly as a farewell to the South African
soldiers, who, now that their work of preparation and installation
was done, would be going home by the first available ship.

We were told by these men, who had been some months on the
island, that dances were events of great local importance and
almost the only form of communal entertainment. Preparations
in the form of dressmaking and sock-knitting would occupy the
women for weeks beforehand. The younger women especially
placed as much store by their appearance on these occasions as
any English girl at her first ball. By the older people, who came
rather to watch than dance, tea-drinking was considered an
essential part of the festivity. No other drink was available ; and
since the tea plant which had once been plentiful on the island
was now almost extinct tea itself had become a valuable luxury.
It had to be bartered from ships, which visited Tristan rarely now,

25-

26 ROCK OF EXILE

and was often hoarded until an incident of sufficient local
importance justified the holding of a 'dawnce.' Even in their
pleasures, it seemed, the islanders were obliged to practise an
austere economy.

At this, our first island dance, the stock of tea was supple-
mented from our own stores and provided even the oldest
inhabitants with an inducement for attending. Most of them
were still strangers to us. However, Bob Glass was present to
wave his stick in familiar greeting. The ceremony itself turned
out to be very different from our expectations. If it had been a
colonial governor's inaugural assembly it could not have been
more formal. The villagers arrived at the hall in little family
groups, greeting one another more like strangers than intimate
neighbours. The unmarried women were carefully chaperoned.

All the girls wore their best dresses, with their brightest sashes
and ribbons; coloured kerchiefs, knotted loosely under their
chins, formed their head-coverings. These they kept on inside
the hall, though some allowed them to fall back, revealing glossy,
dark hair, which they wore combed sleekly across the brow and
coiled at the nape of the neck. White woollen stockings were
the uniform for men and women. The men wore theirs outside
their trouser-legs, to show the rings of coloured wool knitted in
the tops ; the more dapper paraded in white duck trousers which
they had acquired from sailors and treasured for just such
occasions. White was the fashionable colour on Tristan, and
white trousers tacked into white stockings with coloured worsted
tops were obviously thought very elegant. A few of the
islanders possessed boots or shoes, but most of them wore the
familiar oxhide moccasins.

Behaviour was rigid and restrained. The women ranged them-
selves around the walls, securing whatever seating accommoda-
tion was to be had. The men stood awkwardly in groups in the
middle of the floor, talking and laughing with noisy embarrass-
ment. Their wives were more self-possessed, sitting primly
and quietly, many with children in their arms or clinging to
their long, full skirts. The young, unmarried girls attached

DANCE OF WELCOME 2j

themselves closely to their mothers or other matronly relatives.
Only the oldest men were expected to sit with the women.

At length the music struck up. There were two accom-
panists for the dancing: an accordion-player, Alfred Green, and a
fiddler, a merry-faced, monkey-like old man of St Helena stock,
called Andrew Swain. It was unfortunate that, although the
two could play only the same tunes, they could not play them in
harmony ; so that dances had to be performed alternately to the
asthmatic wheezing of Alfred's accordion and the hilarious
screeching of Andrew's fiddle. Often we had to listen to con-
current rival interpretations of the same piece.

The dances were all of the species of barn dance, simple,
unvarying patterns of jigging, shuffling, and stamping. At times
they became alarmingly, though solemnly boisterous. Many of
the tunes had been imported from South Africa — well-known
Afrikaans choruses such as 'Sarie Marais/ 'Vat you Goed/'and
'Suikerbossie' ; others were old English favourites, such as 'Little
Brown Jug/ 'Sweet Lovely Nancy,' and 'Annie Rooney/ which
had become 'island tunes' by the accumulated distortions of both
words and air that made them almost unrecognizable. Although
to our eyes the steps seemed to be all the same, we were assured
that there were many different ones. Some were waltzes, some
were foxtrots. Others resembled sailors* hornpipes, Irish jigs,
or Scots reels. They had such names as (Heel and Toe Polka/
'Hook Legs/ 'Black Tom/ 'Donkey Dance/ and 'Break 'er
Down Dance/ At one stage in the evening it was announced
that we were about to have a 'short tea. ' This we took to mean
an interval given over to tea-drinking. But not at all: the phrase
appeared to be a corruption of 'schottische/

The method of extracting a partner from the compressed row
of women along the side of the room was rather like tearing a rose
from a bramble hedge. A young man, selecting what he thought
an accessible point in the hedge, would advance with unsmiling
countenance as soon as the music started and, saying nothing, with
averted eyes, would seize one of the wrists lying limply for that
purpose in laps and pull its owner to her feet. The process was

28 ROCK OF EXILE

so arbitrary that we wondered how often a man found himself
actually in possession of the partner he had meant to pick.
Perhaps he didn't care. With every appearance of unconcern,
having secured a girl, he proceeded to stomp with her round the
floor, gyrating continually in the direction of the mob.

The men danced with a great deal of energy, making as much
noise as possible but showing no visible signs of enjoyment. The
women were very prim and punctilious, almost as if resentful of
being torn from their thicket; yet it was what they had come for.
Held almost at arm's length, they stared at their partners with
blank, serious faces that seemed to profess a complete ignorance
of the amazing antics of their feet below the swirling skirts.

Custom forbade conversation between dancers. This ensured
the proper degree of impersonality. The precaution was hardly
necessary, since the noise generated by the regular thump and
shuffle of moccasined feet and the occasional scrape of heavy boots
was sufficient to drown all speech — -as well as, perhaps mercifully,
the thin squeaking of the fiddle. Each dance ended, finally and
irrevocably, with two emphatic stamps. In the ensuing silence,
while the dust settled and the boards stopped their trembling, the
men laughed shakily between gasps and the women retired to
their- seats to wipe their shining faces with their kerchiefs. In
this din and bustle it seemed incongruous to see a young mother
bare her breast and suckle her baby with peaceful absorption
between dances.

Among the girls one or two were noticeable for the regularity
and softness of their features. Most of them had dark hair and
eyes, though their skins were often pale and clear; one or two
were fair-haired with blue eyes, and I noticed a number of
children with the same colouring.

My attention focused on one dark-haired, gipsy-like girl of
about eighteen, at which age the women of Tristan were often
married and looked mature, even matronly. Her complexion
was inclined to duskiness, but clear and fresh. Her face was
rounded, with russet cheeks like a ripe apple and very full, red
lips. Her features looked sensual and almost heavy in profile.

DANCE OF WELCOME 2£

In spite of a shyness that was due, no doubt, to the public
occasion, her eyes sparkled with natural vivacity. The round-
ness and fullness of her figure were probably exaggerated by the
number of her billowing skirts gathered in at the waist by a red,
silken sash. Her outer dress was white, accentuating by contrast
the warm colouring of her skin and the dark splendour of her hair.
Her gaily patterned head-cover had slipped back, and in the
activity of the dance a few stray curls had escaped from the tight
bun of hair at the back of her neck. From one of the advance-
party I learned that the girl's name was Emily.

The concluding and most remarkable item of the evening's
entertainment was called a Pillow Dance. All the people present
made a single row round the walls of the room. Within the
rectangle so formed an islander holding a pillow in his arms
danced slowly round the floor until he found a woman whom he
favoured. He dropped the' pillow to the floor in front of her
and the pair knelt on it, facing each other, and demurely kissed.
It was then the woman's turn to dance with the pillow, the first
man following her, until she found another partner to her taste.
The business was repeated until there was a long queue following
the pillow.

The performance proceeded solemnly enough for a while but
then became a hopeless muddle, owing mainly to the fact that old
Andrew the fiddler, in his desire to watch the progress of the
pillow, forgot that he was required to provide music for the
dancers. Moreover most of the girls were too shy to play the
game properly: once placed in possession of the pillow, their only
impulse seemed to be to get rid of it as quickly as possible ; after a
few faltering steps they invariably dropped it before the nearest
male relative. The young men made no pretence at all of
dancing with the pillow: as soon as one found himself in posses-
sion of it he set off on a lumbering tour of the room, often going
round and round until all curiosity about his choice of a girl had
sagged into boredom with his apparent inability to make one.
When at last he did throw the pillow down he invariably remained
beside it with a stupid grin on his face, while the partner he had

30 ROCK OF EXILE

chosen covered her blushing cheeks with both hands and all the
other women shrieked with laughter at what they evidently con-
sidered her misfortune.

The kiss, when it eventually took place, was never more than
the slightest contact of the lips ; and it soon became clear that the
pillow itself was the trophy for which the youths ungallantly
competed.

Among the women and older people interest in the game
lapsed, and many of them began to make preparations for
departure, gathering up their children, reknotting headker-
chiefs. At length, at the far end of the room a friendly tussle
broke out between two young men for the possession of the pillow ;
and while many of the villagers were already leaving the hall
the victor was seen trundling round the room on his own
with the pillow tucked under his arm, for all the world as if he
were looking for a place to sleep.

In this ridiculous state of confusion it seemed to be generally
understood, with no announcement to the effect, that the
evening's entertainment had reached its appointed end. The
dancers began to make their way home through the darkened
village, with boys carrying naked firebrands, which flared and
smoked in the wind, giving to the scene just that touch of festive
brilliance that had been lacking from the dance itself.

CHAPTER FIVE

On the Shelf

ON TRISTAN there are two directions: up the mountain and down
to the sea. Such is life on a shelf. Two of our company climbed
the mountainside as far as a promontory from which, they found,,
they could go no farther, up or down. There they perched for
an hour and shouted, until their plight was noticed and some
islanders went up and brought them down. After that we took
our exercise in off-duty periods about the settlement and on the
beaches below.

For our walks about the village we had a network of paths to
choose from. They were like a gigantic cobweb laid on the
ground, its meshes broken or distorted by projecting roofs, walls,
and knobs of rock. Some paths led to doorways ; others to the
openings of sheep-pens; some skirted playfully round garden
walls to meet others head-on, or raced one another to empty
gateways. And all these openings stared with forlorn fixity at
the horizon. The Tristan islander lives with his back to the
mountain and his face to the sea. The realization of this con-
firmed our sense of being stranded on a ledge.

Two tracks, wider and more deeply defined than the footpaths,,
led from the village to the beaches. These were the 'roads/
The Upper Road led to Big Beach, the Lower Road to Little

3*

32 ROCK OF EXILE

Beach. A third road wandered westward from the settlement to
the Potato Patches, which lay just 'round the corner' of the
mountain, at the far end of the shelf. The total length of this
habitable ledge was nine miles and at no point was the width more
than one mile. Its narrowness drove our feet continually to-
wards the beach, as if in an effort to escape.

Once, on the road to Big Beach, Jock and I met a young islander
leading a bullock-cart. The cart, on two solid wheels of wood,
still showing the bite of the axe, seemed absurdly small ; and it
contained nothing more interesting than a few large stones. The
pair of slow-treading bullocks appeared disproportionately huge.
The 'road' was so deeply rutted that one wheel was lumbering
along a foot higher than the other, while the cart on its wooden
axle lurched and creaked at an amazing angle. Youth and oxen
moved with the same patient, plodding indifference. But the
moment they saw us, all three stopped, as if by a common
impulse, to stare with mingled embarrassment and suspicion.
From the young man we extracted a grudging 'Mawnin', Sah.5

'What are you doing?' asked Jock.

'Drawin' stone/ he replied with unassailable accuracy.

4 What are you going to use that for?'

'Mendin' wall.'

Two words at a time seemed to be all he could spare. Even
that number failed him when I asked where he got the stone.
The most he could manage was to point vaguely at the mountain-
side above Big Beach. Yet, as soon as he passed on towards the
beach, we heard him 'ho-ho-ho-ing' his oxen with commanding
urgency to the village.

On the beach there was fascination in the beat and growl of the
surf, the rattle of shifting pebbles, and the strange, acrid smell of
the giant kelp-weed. There was also the chance of conversation
with a little band of fisher-boys who were less shy than the young
men. The two beaches were separated by a knoll, where an
ancient ship's cannon stood on futile guard, like a toothless
watch-dog, beside a flagpole. Beneath this headland a ridge of
boulders called Julia Reef ran out to sea, sloping under the

ON THE SHELF 33

surface like a sunken breakwater, to lurk in wait for incautious
landing-parties. Here, among the rocks clad with kelp and
laver-weed, the tide left pools, in which the children fished.

Scrambling over vast, crannied stones, wading bare-legged with
feet hardened to the cut of pebbles, they lifted up the life-
crawling tangles of kelp in search of crayfish. Sometimes they
found instead a villainous-looking cuttle-fish. One impudent,
four-year-old urchin — the smallest of that band of diminutive
beachcombers — related, in a sharp, treble voice, while his black
eyes shone like polished stones, how he had swum in one of these
pools and been clutched round the waist by the tentacles of a
'catfish/ as he called it, striving to pull him under.

'Tell you what/ he piped, fl wrostle 'at boy all right. 'E
wanna drag me down, but I drag 'im ashore instead an* give 'im
waffa! I chop 'is legs off one by one with my old fish-knife till 'elet
go an5 fall on the rock. Then I tear 'im up an' use 'im for bait. '

The boy's voice went hard with triumph, and his shrill laugh
cut the air like a whip -lash:

*Ha-ah, take more'n a catfish to get this fella! '

On another occasion I found the same gang of children splashing
barefooted through the rock-pools as they stoned to death a
penguin that had marooned itself high on the beach. The bird
was nearly helpless out of the water, falling face down over every
large pebble, lurching awkwardly to its feet again, agitating its
useless flippers and tripping over strips of seaweed in its impotent
anxiety to reach the sea's edge, where it would be gone like a
flash of a shark's fin.

Every time it stumbled erect, the boys would bowl it over with
hard-flung pebbles, their voices chorusing a single, sharp yell of
exultation. Their motive was not cruelty, but amusement: they
stared in silent wonder when I suggested that the penguin had
feelings for pain as they had. Their intention was not to hurt it
— the idea was beyond them — but merely to knock it over, as if
it were a tin can on a fence that obligingly set itself up again each
time it was toppled down. Their cries were as wild and inhuman
as those of the ravenous, hook-billed sea-birds.

34 ROCK OF EXILE

Little Beach, the boys' favourite hunting-ground, was a steep
strip of shingle, where the tide often threshed right up under the
cliffs. It differed completely in character from Big Beach on the
other side of the headland. This was an expanse of black sand,
ribbed by the tide and sparkling with tiny gems of grit. There
were no pebbles here, and only a few boulders like blackened
teeth among the white froth of the surf. It was not really a big
beach, but it seemed long Plough as I walked along it ; the ends
stretched out before and behind me like the tails of a black scarf.
On one side the mountain advanced threateningly, driving me
towards the long-reaching arms of the surf, which leapt over the
boulders on the other side of nie and rushed across the sand,
growling as it fell back defeated.

At the far end of Big Beach was a ridge called by the islanders
Pigbite. From its top I looked down on a wild glen of tree-fern,
bunch-grass, and scrub, interspersed with naked outcrops of stone,
like the miniature mountains of a rock-garden. It was a barren
reward to have trudged the beach for ; but two tiny lagoons, like
upturned eyes, stared blandly at the sky. Their blueness was as
refreshing as liquid. They seemed too beautiful to be anything
but a mirage; and then, from among the bushes beside them,
appeared a bent old woman, assisted by two urchins to load sticks
into bags on a donkey. The boys kept leaving their work and
chasing each other in play. The donkey stood like a figure carved
in wood, with one knee bent and one ear drooped, the bags slung
panier-wise across the ridgy hump of its back. The old woman's
voice creaked in the distance, like a door on rusty hinges, as she
called the boys to gather more wood.

The boys, however, had seen me, and curiosity drew them to
the ridge. They ran barefooted among the rocks and bushes
until they were a few yards from me. Then they stopped. It
was several minutes before they came edging shyly round a
boulder into my presence. The taller boy appeared ready to run
away at the slightest alarm. The smaller one — I recognized his
round, mischievous face and bright eyes — held his ground ; but
even this intrepid wrestler with catfish and stoner of penguins

ON THE SHELF 3 5

seemed to lack some of his boldness now that he was confronted
almost alone by one of the * strangers.'

I asked their names. They giggled. After a minute the little
one pointed at the other and said:

"At's Dondil.'

Donald, I presumed.

'And what's your name?'

'Pee-uss.'

Of that I could make Piers or Pearce ; I preferred the former.

The boys had the look of brothers, the younger one about four
or five years old, the other about seven. The little one was
obviously the brighter. His piping voice now volunteered
further information. Pointing to the old woman, he announced:

°At's Grannie Toodie.'

' What about the donkey ? ' I asked . * Has he go t a name ? '

They stared, glanced at each other and bubbled into shrill
laughter. With withering scorn, between shrieks, Piers cried:
' 'At ain't a dawnkey ! ' At's a jenny! '

At last, overcoming his amusement, he added with more polite-
ness: * 'At's Black Tippy. She belong to ow sister Hemly.'

I would have asked more about Emily — was she the same Emily
as had drawn my attention at the dance? — but the boys were
scampering away among the rocks, laughing again in sharp, treble
voices at the ignorance of outsiders who didn't know a * jenny'
from a 'jack' donkey.

Beyond Pigbite the mountain wall shouldered its way out to
sea again, closing the end of the shelf. This immurement only
emphasized our isolation on Tristan. Shut out from the rest of
the world, we were shut in even on the island. For months we
should be able to look at nothing but the mountain in one
direction and the sea in the other.

Presently I saw the little procession of 'jenny, ' old woman, and
rascally grandchildren making its way slowly back along the beach.
I followed their footsteps home to the village; for, whether we
liked it or not, that tiny settlement must be 'home' for us, as for
the islanders, so long as the Navy kept us on that narrow shelf.

CHAPTER SIX

Alone with the Past

ON THE rare occasions when, in those early days of November,
the siin shone on Tristan, the wind was roused to a gale of anger.
It whipped the sea to a roaring, mad-capped frenzy, while the sun
turned the crests to a dazzling white. Into the bay below Herald
Point — on the exposed tip of which a tiny hut had been perched
at the Navy's instructions, far removed even from the rest of the
station — long, curving rollers raced to the shore. Inside the hut
a solitary operator sat with crackling ear-phones clamped to his
temples; outside the wind whistled and hooted and charged
against the door like some demented creature pounding for entry.
Aerial masts quivered and strained at their bases and the wires
whined in a shrill, sad key.

For long periods the wind kept off the rain that hung in heavy
clouds. Over the sea lay a bright haze, pierced by a few gold
rays, and from indoors the windows appeared misted with a fine
vapour, which was neither rain nor spray — rather as if the wind by
sheer force had beaten the moisture out of the atmosphere.

Then came a squall. Without warning the wind drove a

36

spatter of drops against the hut. The sun darkened and tl
heavy, mournful rain-clouds seemed to collapse over the islan
Water streamed down the window-panes and splashed on tl
wooden steps outside. The onset lasted only a few minute
Then the squall could be seen moving away across the grey-haze
wave-whipped expanse to the east. Sunshine, struggli]
through, created a luminous arc of rainbow. Timid rays glir
mered through the dripping panes, like laughter emergii
through tears.

Such was the weather persisting throughout the first month
our stay on the island. At this time our isolation was complet
by an event which took place on ist December. We i
ceived our first visitor from the world outside — a little trar
steamer, bound from South America to the Cape. She had be
diverted from her course by instructions to call at Tristan
Cunha and pick up the contingent of South African soldie:
whose work was now finished.

The ship came upon us out of a morning mist, with a bew
dered air as if she had experienced difficulty in finding ti
unfamiliar rock. She anchored off Little Beach, from which t
islanders promptly launched a boat in the hope of doing soi
trade. Most of us found an opportunity of going on board i
the pleasure of seeing a few strange faces and hearing some ne
from the * outside,' In the afternoon the whole populati
assembled on the beach for the leave-taking of the soldiers, whc
acquaintance among the islanders had had time to become clo
The effusion of kisses and tears from the women amazed us ; •
wondered whether our departure, at a date still distant, woi
evoke similar demonstrations. We thought it impossible at 1
time and were more disposed to envy the Springboks th
prospect of spending Christmas in Cape Town.

In the weeks following their departure, with our circle of fa
shrunk still closer about the mess-table, we learned the value
the weather in making the days on Tristan skip lightly by or d
like the links of a heavy chain. At last it began to improve.

38 ROCK OF EXILE

the cottage gardens, besides the clumps of tussock-grass, a few
flowers began to appear, like hopeful sprigs on an old maid's
bonnet. The wind retained its querulous note and the sibilance
of the surf accompanied us through our days and nights ; but as
December advanced the sun became a more daring visitor and the
squalls more intermittent.

We still saw little of the islanders. Social activities, we
realized, were not absent from the life of Edinburgh Settlement,
but they were more formal and discreet than might have been
expected in such a small, enclosed society; and, excepting such
solemnities as the recent dance, they were organized on a family
basis. So far we had not penetrated that milieu; we could only
roam in the vicinity, half attracted, half repelled by the dark
interior that showed occasionally through a cottage doorway.

Each threshold consisted of a wide, smooth-worn stone sunk
into the ground. The door was always made in two parts, upper
and lower, like stable doors in England. The top hatch seemed
to be kept open in all but the wildest weather. When the sun
gleamed — more often now — on the unpainted, weather-beaten
wood of the lower half-door, the void square above peered at the
passer-by like a cavernous eye from under the shaggy brows of
thatch. Sometimes we glimpsed a face in the opening. Some-
times a child's head peeped over, wide-eyed, between tiny hands
that gripped the edge of the wood ; but it always dropped out of
sight as soon as it became aware of being seen. We were still,
after a month on the island, a source at once of wonder and fear.

At this stage it seemed to us that of all the living things on
Tristan human beings were the rarest and most difficult to meet.
Other creatures were both tamer and more familiar. On the
grassy common in front of the village waddled little detachments
of grey-and- white geese, wagging their fluffy tails, paddling pink
feet or dipping red bills in the 'watron.' In the very centre of
this green stood a miniature covert of gorse-bushes. Here, in
the dusty hollows made by their own bodies among the clumps,
black island pigs rolled in contentment on sunny days while a
few lean hens pecked the insects from them. . The sheep were

ALONE WITH THE PAST 39

evidently kept on higher ground at this time of year, though the
grass near the settlement showed evidence of their nibbling and
the breeze carried their bleating from the mountainside. Only a
few cows were to be seen, but there were numerous bullocks,
used for drawing the carts. Sometimes, when a young bullock
was being broken in to the yoke, he would be left to wander all
day with his yoke-fellow, their necks imprisoned together in the
heavy wooden collar. If encountered in this fashion, the bullocks
were timid; but unencumbered they could be dangerous, es-
pecially at night, when they would charge at anyone carrying a
light.

The commonest animals were donkeys, small, sleepy-eyed,
shaggy, grey or brown. They roamed among the cottages,
through gateways and into gardens with a casual, proprietary
air and far more self-possession than the people. On a narrow
footpath I have often stood aside for one to pass and received not
so much as the droop of an ear in notice of my existence. At
night, going out to the hut on the Point, carrying no torch for
fear of the charging bullocks, I have more than once fallen head-
long over a donkey sleeping in my path, as immovable as a
boulder. Even long-dead ones were a familiar sight, startling
enough in broad daylight, gruesome at dusk. In silent, green
hollows, among shadowy rocks, in the bottoms of gulches, I have
been pulled up sharply by the staring eye-sockets, long jaws, and
grinning teeth of a skull, sometimes a complete skeleton, its
cage of ribs bleached white, the grass growing up through it as it
lay like a resting spectre. There were so many long-nosed asses'
skulls, so many homed skulls of cattle and small-boned sheep's
heads littering the plateau that we walked about half in fear of
coming on the unburied remains of human castaways — until one
day, along with Ginger, Jock, and Charlie, I was shown the
islanders' cemetery.

It was just another enclosure with a tumbledown wall of stones,
distinguished from the neighbouring flax gardens mainly by its
greater state of neglect. Beside it ran a deep gully or * gutter, ' in
the bottom of which flowed Big Watron. We were standing

40 ROCK OF EXILE

here, looking down at the stream, when we saw our acquaintance,
old Bob Glass, coining down beside it, complete with hat and
stick. He greeted us from afar in the tone of a now-familiar
friend — 'Good day, gen'lmen!' — and arrived on faltering steps.

'I see you-all down 'yah by the graveyard, so I come fa* to show
you grandad's grave/

He climbed out of the gully and waved his stick commandingly
towards an opening in the wall. Like sheep we allowed ourselves
to be herded into the enclosure, while Bob fussed at our heels,
holding his stick out like a shepherd's crook.

Obviously the parish afforded no sexton to trim the grass and
paid little attention to the places of its dead. Most of the graves
were unmarked in any way. Here and there was a rough wooden
cross with a name and date scratched on it. One or two rudi-
mentary headstones lurched at different angles out of the ground.
Only one grave, in the far corner, was distinguished by anything
worthy of being called a memorial. To this grave we were led
— or rather shepherded. In respectful silence we read the
inscription on the marble tombstone, which had manifestly not
been made on the island,

WILLIAM GLASS

BORN AT KELS.O, SCOTLAND,

THE FOUNDER OF THIS SETTLEMENT AT

TRISTAN D'ACUNHA,
IN WHICH HE RESIDED 37 YEARS

AND FELL ASLEEP IN JESUS,
NOVEMBER 24-TH, 18(3. AGED 6j YEARS.

Asleep in Jesus! far from thee
Thy kindred and their graves may be ;
But thine is still a blessed sleep,
From which none ever wakes to weep.

The sign above the inscription showed that William Glass had
been a freemason. The stone, Bob said, had been sent out from
America by relatives living there. The descendant of the
original founder then pointed out for our amusement where he

ALONE WITH THE PAST 41

and his brothers had in their boyhood prised the lead out of the
lettering with their knives, to melt down and make pellets for
their guns.

This story set the old islander at first gleefully, then wistfully,
on a train of reminiscences. It appeared that the young people
of Tristan, as in every other generation of every other com-
munity in the world, were 'not what they used to be. . . .'

The village was hidden from our sight by the nearer prospect of
tall flax in the adjoining garden. Standing there in the little
graveyard among the neglected stones, we were as if stranded
between the mountain and the sea. The old man's voice rustled
vaguely, becoming confused with the rustle of the distant surf.
A breeze moved among the flax, rattling the dry stalks together-
its passage was like a shiver of loneliness. Bob's words, as he
talked on and on, came to us thinly, with a reed-like sound, lost
on the wind, as if he were a long way off, in another world,
among those forgotten figures of his youth.

He seemed to be talking not to us, nor even to himself, but to
the wind and the sea and the dreary flax and the crude grave-
stones that alone with him recalled the names of those dead ones.

Slowly, like a dreamer awaking, he came back to us out of his
world of memory, saw us again and recollected his hospitable
intention of inviting us up to his house for a cup of 'strong drink'
and to meet his wife, Charlotte.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Am Exile9 s Home

ALONG the grassy lank of the stream in the bottom of the guHly
we followed Bob Glass in the direction of his cottage. Tie
promised Introduction to his wife was prefaced with a timely
warning: 'You-all ain't gotta be skeered of my wife, 'cos she's a
big woman — biggest woman on the island.' There was a ring of
pride in his voice and perhaps we should have pleased him if we
had shown signs of fear,

As we trooped behind the old man through the low doorw&y,
she rose from a seat a.t the comer of the hearth and advanced to
the middle of the roo»m, as if prepared for any encounter.
Without being especially tall, she was certainly *big. * H<er
voluminous black skirt effectively concealed a wide area of
cottage floor. Her large, red hands were wiping themselves,
unhurriedly, in a small white apron at her waist. Her heayy
bosom was constrained, with difficulty, in a white blouse.
Meagre, greying hair appeared in a roll in front of a faded green
kerchief on her head. She held the centre of the floor., as
Immovable as a rock, and surveyed us sombrely from large, dull

42

AN EXILE S HOME 43

eyes as we advanced in turn to take her hand and receive a
mumbled ' 'Ow you do, Sir?' in greeting. Then, the encounter
over, and no ground yielded, she retired honourably to her coign
of vantage by the hearth, leaving to her husband the social duties
of seeing us seated on various boxes and chests about the room.

With slow, deliberate movements, eloquent of her determina-
tion not to be flustered or even perceptibly interested by the
unexpected arrival of strangers, Charlotte filled a pot with water
from a tall pitcher and placed it on a grid over the fire. Then,
settling her enormous bulk back on the tiny box which served as
her seat, she relapsed into stolid silence, looking occasionally at
us but more frequently at the pot.

We gazed round at our first cottage interior. The room was
fairly large and was well kept. The roof, walls, and floor were
boarded inside, the actual stone of the building visible only in the
wide, open fire-place. Some attempts at decoration had been
made. The walls were painted in two colours, the top half
white, the bottom blue. The paint had presumably been
acquired from some ship. Coloured pictures cut from an
ancient magazine had been stuck here and there. The tiny
recess of the single window had been neatly boarded and cur-
tained with a rag of butter muslin. A small square table stood
against the wall near the window and was covered with a faded
green cloth. The boxes on which we sat were of the same kind
as sea-chests, painted and covered on top with pieces of fabric —
one of them embroidered unexpectedly with the name *Jane
Austen.' No doubt this treasure, like many others in the house,
had been acquired either from a passing ship or from well-wishers
in England who occasionally sent parcels to the island through a
missionary society. On the mantelpiece were various oddments,
including a clock, and some shelves in a corner bore a few antique
articles of crockery. All these domestic possessions looked old
and well worn, but everything was clean and neat.

This room appeared to be the all-purpose living-room. The
only other apartment in the cottage was a small bedroom, which
was nothing more than a box-like portion of the main room

44 ROCK OF EXILE

partitioned off by a plank wall in which a tiny square of window
space, devoid of glass, had been cut to allow light to enter the
bedroom from the living-room. There were no windows in the
back wall of the house: the only window letting in light from
outside was that in the front wall, which had small glass panes in
it. The inside of the house would have been very dark had not
the upper half of the main door been left open. It appeared that
some person slept in the living-room, for along the back wall,
opposite the window, was a long wooden sofa, covered with dark
blankets, obviously a bed as well as a couch. It was on top of
these blankets that old Bob himself had taken his seat — as if it
were a customary one — in order to direct our attention with his
walking-stick to the points of interest in his home.

He told us that the wood used for lining and furnishing the
house, as of many other cottages in the village, had been salvaged
from the sailing-ships wrecked on Tristan in the old days. At
one time, he admitted, it had even been the custom of the settlers
to pray in their church for God to send them a ' good5 shipwreck.
However, the ministers sent out from England had dissuaded
them from the practice. As a consequence, Bob seemed to imply,
the young people of Tristan nowadays had often to wait three or
four years to get married until the bridegroom had collected
enough drift-wood to construct the i principals' of his house.
Since the advent of steamships, wrecks, and even visits, had
become rare, and this had increased the value of drift-wood.
Sometimes the derelict bough or trunk of a tree, originating
from a shore many hundreds of miles away, would be washed up
on the beach, crusted with barnacles that it had accumulated on
its sea-passage. This would be rescued and hoarded by the lucky
finder. Once, Bob said, a trunk of immense size — perhaps a
South American redwood — had been washed up and had been
frugally chopped at by the whole population for a year.

The old islander sat stiffly erect on the sofa, his hands resting
on the knob of his stick, which was held between his knees, his
bright, protuberant eyes swivelling from one face to another as
he talked. At the corner of the hearth, Charlotte, balancing her

AN EXILE S HOME 4£

weight precariously on the small box, said nothing, but divided
her attention between us and the pot. It was an open question
which drew the larger share of it. Eventually her grudging
interest in our presence and remarks so completely usurped it that
the pot had to remind her of its need by bubbling loudly. That
was our little triumph ; but the ensuing brew was hers — a species
of thick tea that certainly justified Bob's adjective * strong. ' We
sipped it with perseverance from mugs that were very thick —
and very big.

Bob accompanied our sipping with the account of his life in
the Orange Free State, where he had married his first wife,
Elizabeth. His three eldest sons had been born in South Africa,
two more by Elizabeth on the island after he had brought his
family to his native Tristan. The first of these two was that same
dark-browed Sidney who had led us up from Big Beach on the day
of our arrival. Pointing with his wavering stick, Bob drew our
attention to a large, framed wedding portrait of himself as a
young man with a huge black moustache and the same prominent,
ever bright eyes, and his wife in white, demurely downcast under
a lofty crown of dark hair and a diminutive straw hat. The wife
had died after the birth of her fourth son — there had been some
daughters too, but Bob was vague and indifferent about the
number of them- — and almost at once he had married the placid
island-born creature who throughout his narrative had sat
hunched on her box, staring at us with her large, opaque eyes and
something of the cud-chewing imperturbability of a cow.

About the island itself Bob had much to tell us. It was
apparently not what it used to be. In his youth food had been
far more plentiful and varied. Of eggs and milk there had never
been any shortage, and all the women had known how to make
butter and cheese : now the young women knew nothing. Ships
had been regular callers then and there had been plenty of ' trade. '
In exchange for fresh vegetables warships had given cash, which
the islanders had spent on board at the dry canteen; whaling
vessels had paid in clothes and groceries. Now ships hardly ever
called/

46 ROCK OF EXILE

On the subject of whales, Bob told us that he himself had
started a whaling 'industry5 on Tristan after his return from
South Africa. He described with enthusiasm the sport the island
men had had out in their boats, harpooning the whales.

'Did you kill many?' we asked.

'No,' he replied in a tone that seemed to rebuke us for
irrelevance, 'we never killed none/

Once seals had also been numerous on the island. They had
come ashore there to do their courting, Bob said, and a noisy
business they made of it. Now they had all left. When asked
why, he explained, without any sense of responsibility, that the
islanders had shot so many of them that the others had stopped
coming.

The birds, too, had all migrated to the neighbouring islands,
Nightingale and Inaccessible, to which the men had to row or sail
to fetch penguins', petrels', and mollymawks' eggs. Again we
ventured a question, though by now we knew the answer.

4 Why don't the birds nest any more on Tristan?'

'Because the islanders shoot them off.'

Our host persistently referred to his fellow settlers as a
people apart from himself, for whose vagaries he felt in no way
accountable.

After a pause, he offered us another example of the island's
deterioration:

'Even the goats iss gone! '

Also shot, we supposed. But no! It appeared that one day
they had all run down a slope of the mountain and hurled them-
selves over a cliff into the sea. We waited for a further explana-
tion, but Bob did not seem to think any was required. His
sorrowful headshake seemed to imply that such happenings were
natural on Tristan — and that when we had lived there longer we
should not think them strange.

On this forlorn note he ended his recital of the blessings of his
island home. For a long time he sat gazing at the floor, and
Charlotte, as if in sympathy, gazed mournfully into the fire.
Our presence seemed to have been forgotten, and no one thought

AN EXILE'S HOME 47

of anything to say. The silence stretched tauter and tauter until it
was snapped by the sudden irruption into the room of a young
man and a dog. They were in the house before we had time to
perceive their entry, the young man having swung the half-door
open and stepped well into the middle of the room on his soft
oxhide soles without noticing our presence. When he did
become aware of us, he appeared to undergo an abrupt attack of
paralysis and lockjaw simultaneously. The dog at his heels
seemed no less aghast at our unfamiliar presence: he stood trans-
fixed, head and tail down, forgetting even to sniff. It seemed a
long minute before old Bob roused himself to break this second
tension.

'This 'yah's my youngest boy — Wilson/ he announced, and
then added as if disclaiming all liability in the matter: "E's
Shawlutt's son/ It was a moment before it became clear to us
what he was explaining: that this was his son — the only child —
by his second wife.

We greeted Wilson, but he neither spoke nor moved, unless
it was true — as it appeared — that both he and the dog leaned
back a trifle as if from a sharp gust. Then Charlotte's voice,
heard really for the first time during our visit, jerked him out of
his trance with a shrill, harsh question:

'Ain't you got no talk, Wilson?'

In spite of the harshness of the tone, there was a note of strong,
proprietary affection in her voice now, and her attention seemed
fixed at last on an object that fully engaged it.

Wilson dragged his cap from his head and began to wring it
mercilessly in his hands while he treated the company to a
tortured and vapid smile. He was about twenty years old, slim,
and of a fair height; his vacant appearance was due perhaps more
to shocked embarrassment than to stupidity. But we had no
chance of making sure. As quickly as he had entered the house
he retreated, the dog crowding his heels in an equal anxiety to
escape from the situation. This departure set a precedent for
ours. Before leaving, two of us pledged ourselves to Bob's wife

4-Vm+. i,rA *ir>r>rM-Af*r\ fn

48 ROCK OF EXILE

privilege of washing our clothes. We could either bring them,
she said, to the cottage or Wilson could come to our quarters
regularly to fetch them. After his recent display of inarticulacy,
we rather doubted Wilson's hardihood for such a task. Char-
lotte, however, seemed to have no doubt at all of his obedience.
Old Bob accompanied us to the door, hobbling on his stick,
and even Charlotte hoisted her unwieldy bulk to its feet and
wished us a 'Good awfternoon' in her drawling island speech.
Our parting glimpse of the old man, after we had promised to
return soon, showed him stiffly poised in the dark void of the
doorway under the frowning thatch of the cottage. There was
no sign outside of Wilson or his dog, but we had no doubt that
from some concealed vantage-point the eyes of both watched our
departure.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A Year Begins

SPRING and Christmas advanced hand in hand. With an
appropriateness that was, to our northern minds, incongruous,
the season of new growth coincided with the beginning of a new
year. Early one morning the sun entered, disguised as a shaft of
brilliant, restless dust, through the east window of the hut on
Herald Point; it stretched an arm across the operator's table to
the chair in which I sat hunched before the receiver, and alighted
like a gentle tap on my shoulder. I looked up as if a stranger had
entered.

The face of Tristan was being transformed. The flax in the
gardens was bursting into dark red buds and its sombre leaves had
a fresh green lustre. The solitary thicket of gorse-bushes on the
grassy common in front of the village was spurting little flame-like
jets of yellow blossom. Even the mountain laid aside its shawl
of cloud to reveal shoulders clad in a new garment of green scrub,
blazoned with patches of furze. In the growing warmth the
village opened like a flower. The cottagers emerged from their
chrysalis, too busy to be shy: men drove ox-carts laden with

49

SO ROCK OF EXILE

brushwood for the Christmas cooking-fires ; women sat in door-
ways carding wool ; boys carried home the first early potatoes ;
girls clustered in chattering groups, their knitting-needles flying
as their tongues wagged.

Our acquaintance began slowly to widen, largely through our
contacts with old Bob Glass and with Kenneth Rogers, who acted
as mess-boy and assistant cook at the station. Working among
us daily, Kenneth had lost all shyness in our presence and had
acquired many of our ways and even our expressions, so that he
hardly seemed to us an islander. At twenty he was young
enough to be adaptable. He was full of curiosity about our
world and its strange machines ; he soon learned to hold his own
in the humorous back-chat at meal-times, and he soon mastered
the methods of cooking and baking in our galley, so different from
those in an island kitchen. He was cheerful, fresh-coloured,
well built, with a strong, resonant voice and intelligent, well-
shaped features.

As Bob Glass was our link with the older generation, Kenneth
was our sponsor among the young people. He had soon intro-
duced most of us to his family. The home was dominated by his
mother, Agnes Rogers, a small but energetic person with bright
eyes, a quick manner of speaking, a ready smile, and a face as
wrinkled and red-cheeked as a ripe crab-apple. She was not a
native of Tristan, but an Irishwoman — the sister of Bob Glass's
first wife, Elizabeth. She had come to the island at the same
time as her sister, had married first a Joe Glass, who had died, and
then William Rogers, who had become blind. The whole
management of the household had fallen on her slight shoulders.
She had brought up a family of three children by her first husband
and five by her second, and had managed to provide them all with
a rudimentary education beyond that of most of the other
islanders. Agnes was a Roman Catholic and had taught her
children in the same faith, conducting services in her cottage, so
that the Rogers family formed yet another separate little com-
munity within the colony of Tristan.

The cottage was not always clean or tidy, but it offered an

A YEAR BEGINS £1

atmosphere of unstrained friendliness and welcome. We met
Kenneth's brothers, 'Bunty' and Rudolph, who were twins, and
his two unmarried sisters, Asturias Ann, as pretty as she was
plump, and Marie, a gay tomboy of fifteen. Among them Ken
was called by a local nickname, 'Mecca/

Often in the evenings the house would echo with merriment
far removed from the sombre conduct which had seemed to us to
characterize the islanders. Through it all, blind William sat in
his chair, his gaze fixed in front of him in a listening stare, joining
in with a loud laugh at every joke. Agnes was at once sufficient
of an islander and sufficient of an outsider to provide a shrewd,
half-ironic commentary on the life of the settlement. Sometimes
she acted for us almost as an interpreter.

With these livelier contacts during our off- watch periods and
the daily improving weather, our time of exile began to pass
pleasantly enough. Almost before we realized it, Christmas
was upon us; to our English imaginations it seemed almost a
blasphemy that it should arrive with the season of shooting grass,
fresh buds, and sunshine.

On Christmas Eve a party was held at the station, 'Doc/
padre, sister, and the others of the 'quarter-deck* joining with us
in nostalgic imitation of parties at home. Perhaps because of the
warmth, the sun in the evening, the absence of a coal-fire, of
holly, mistletoe, and fir boughs, the atmosphere was all wrong.
Presents from the store were distributed by the padre masquer-
ading behind a cotton-wool beard ; party games were played in
the recreation space of the mess, sobriety putting on a false
heartiness that was worse than drunkenness ; for one evening we
tried, unconvincingly, to imagine ourselves in England, shutting
out consciousness of the bleak island outside the windows.
Possibly we should have done better to go into the village. How
Christmas Eve was being celebrated there we did not know;
certainly the children would not be hanging up their stockings in
expectation of presents .

On Christmas morning several of us attended service in the
village. The little church of Saint Mary-the- Virgin stood in the

£2 ROCK OF EXILE

very centre of the village. It was a low, long-shaped building,
stone-walled and with a dry-stone enclosure, just like another
cottage; but it was distinguished from its shock-headed neigh-
bours by a corrugated iron roof, at one end of which was erected
a little white-painted wooden cross and at the other the rescued
ship's bell of the wrecked Mabel Clark.

The islanders sat in silent, close-packed rows, on benches —
men on one side of the aisle, women and children on the other.
There was something child-like in the rapt attention of their faces
as they listened to the story of the birth of Christ. Near the
altar was a model, built in a wooden box by the padre, showing
the inside of the stable, complete with manger, tiny doll Jesus,
cardboard cut-out figures of Mary, Joseph, and cattle. It was
illuminated by a small, concealed electric torch bulb, which
turned the miniature interior into a magical, glowing world of its
own. It had been designed mainly to interest and instruct the
children, for whom the minister provided Sunday-school; but
throughout the sermon it drew the wondering gaze of the men
and women. Even during the carol-singing, having no hymn-
books to read and only the padre's voice to follow, they could
keep their eyes and imaginations turned towards that window-like
glimpse of the unreal.

During the afternoon a party was given at the station for the
village children, who came with their mothers. Presents of
sweets were received with wide-eyed, if solemn, delight. The
children's shyness made it hard to organize games, but as soon as
the accordionist struck up familiar tunes boys and girls, even the
youngest, stood up in pairs to dance the local steps in earnest
imitation of their elders.

In the evening, in the same room, we were hosts to the grown-
ups at another Mawnce.' Once again there was the screech of
Andrew Swain's 'woileen' and the drone of Alfred Green's
melodeon; the wooden floor resounded to the rhythmical
drumming of moccasined and booted feet. Faces shone with
sweat, for the night was as warm as an English midsummer's eve.

From Kenneth we learned more of the customs of dance nights.

i. Hauling roughly trimmed stone into position on the gable top.

2. The 'gable-ends' are completed first, and then the walls.

BUILDING A HOUSE

3. 'Principals' and rafters are made of drift-wood and salvage from packing
cases. (Rudolph ' Twin ' Rogers)

roof is thatched with New Zealand flax and the ridge sealed with turf.

A YEAR BEGINS £3

As in church, it was not considered proper for the men to sit
with the women. A husband, having brought his wife to the
hall, left her to find her own seat while he mingled with the other
self-conscious males in the middle of the room. Still less pardon-
able would it have been for a young man to place himself beside
one of the unmarried girls or hold open conversation with her.
Only after long courtship and recognized acceptance was he
permitted to escort her to and from the hall.

We were surprised by Ken's assurance that it was on these
dance nights that many of the island love-affairs began. The
segregation was so strict and the dancing itself so rugged that there
appeared no opportunity for intimacies. Custom, however, had
evolved an explicit though unformulated code for the affections.
Selection of partners, as Kenneth explained, was by no means as
haphazard as it looked. If a girl 'stood up' for the first dance
with any young man other than her own brother or cousin, she
was openly acknowledging him as an admirer ; great would have
been the scandal if a wife had danced that number with any man
but her husband. During subsequent dances, if an unmarried
man chose the same partner on three occasions, he was declaring
— for all to see, including her parents — his wish to 'come
a-co't'n'.' 'Annie Rooney' was the 'sweethearts' dawnce' and
carried a special significance.

We began to appreciate how heavily charged with under-
currents was the atmosphere in our mess-room on this occasion.
'You-all gotta watch out,' as Kenneth warned, 'else you come
'yah fa' to dawnce an' you go 'way fa' to git married.'

Among the young women present I again observed Emily, the
girl I had noticed at the previous dance. She was obviously in
demand, but she changed her partner with every number.
Among those who danced with her were Wilson, Bob Glass's
youngest son, and — for one stumbling attempt — myself. After
the first blushing murmur of consent, she remained silent and kept
her black eyelashes lowered. My own concentration, her shy-
ness, and the general hubbub of the dancing made conversation
impossible. At a false step of mine, her embarrassment threw

$4- ROCK OF EXILE

off a quick, wild smile, which showed a flash of white teeth and
lifted the curves of her cheeks. Beneath the momentarily raised
lashes her eyes brimmed with a dark life that was almost liquid.
For the next item I was succeeded as her partner by Kenneth
Rogers — smiling broadly. To my surprise I observed Emily
talking volubly to him throughout the dance, her eyes raised and
sparkling ; and repeatedly as she talked, her dark gaze flashed in
my direction but withdrew instantly when it encountered mine.

At what we considered the early hour of ten the entertainment
ended, the family parties reassembled and crowded out through
the door as if in fear of being left behind. In a remarkably short
time they disappeared in the warm darkness under the mountain,
where the cottages lay hidden. Only Kenneth stayed to wash the
tea-cups while 1 lingered to set the chairs again around the mess-
table for breakfast.

'Tell you what, sonny,' he called from the kitchen, * reckon
I know which gal you'se gonna visit night-time come the Noo
Yah/

' Which?* I asked.

* David's Hemly,' came the answer.

c Who's David?5 1 demanded sharply,

'David Hagan,' he said — -then added for my comfort: * Hemly
is David's daughter.'

'Hagan! I haven't heard that name before. Are there many
families on the island called Hagan?'

'There ain't bare one left. All the others is gone away to
Sout5 Africa, else America,' explained Ken, adding as a malicious
afterthought: 'Guess you won't find no trouble in makin' out
David's house.'

' I noticed jou were busy talking to her, ' I accused.

'Reckon it was Hemly was talkin' to me,' he returned; and
having waited in vain for me to put the question, he called out:
* You know what she wass sayin' ? '

'What?'

' She say you was a rale sawny fella. '

* What does that mean?' I asked hopefully.

A YEAR BEGINS $ $

Kenneth's head appeared round the door. °At means you
ain't got no talk. You didn't say no sweet wo'ds while you was
dawncin' . ' The head withdrew with a roar of laughter,

'Noo Yah,3 as Ken called it, approached in a blaze of sunshine,
the nights like a series of hot gasps. True to the Scots origin of
the first settler, the islanders reserved their private merrymaking
for that occasion. On New Year's Eve boisterous groups passed
from house to house. The men were fantastically disguised,
some dressed as women, others with soot-blackened faces and
equipped with cows' tails. Sidney Glass was beating a big drum
— an oil drum — and old Andrew's fiddle fairly squeaked with
delight. In each cottage that they visited an impromptu dance
and sing-song were held; but these were private festivities and
the music reached us only as veiled sounds.

Until late in the evening the sun was mellow. Its last rays,
catching the rims of the gulches, kindled them to a greenish-gold
effulgence. Minute shadows picked out the bushes, giving a
wild shagginess to the mountainside. Up there the sheep moved
in changing formations, pale shapes in the dusk. But one of those
pale shapes was not a sheep. Beside the 'watron' on the lower
slope near the cottages, a girl in a white dress was walking among
the rocks. She would vanish, I knew, if I climbed up there ; but
the sight of her, identified in my imagination with the girl of the
dance, made me realize how remote we still were from these
islanders. Surrounded by neighbours exchanging visits in the
spring twilight, passing to and fro among the low walls of the
flax gardens, I was still an outsider. It might be worth the
perseverance needed to win their confidence, to penetrate their
secrets — perhaps to catch up with that white dress fluttering on
the mountainside.

CHAPTER NINE

Meet the Elders

MAKING friends with the islanders individually was by no means
easy. Shyness among the younger ones was still an obstacle.
The limited number of Christian and surnames added to our
difficulty ; we often found ourselves confusing one islander with
another whose combination of names was the same.

There were only seven family names: Glass, Swain, Green,
Rogers, Hagan, Repetto, and Lavarello. The Glass family had
been longest on the island. The first Swain and the first Rogers
had also belonged to the early days of the settlement. The
Greens were descended from a Dutch sailor, Peter Green or
Pieter Groen, who had been shipwrecked on the island. The
Hagan family derived from Andrew Hagan, an American whaling
captain who had chosen to settle there. The Repettos and
Lavarellos were the most recent stock, originating from two
survivors of a wrecked Italian brigantine, Italia.

One of these castaways still lived on Tristan and was among the
earliest acquaintances we made — largely because of our associa-
tion with old Bob Glass, already recognized as our link with the
village elders. With my colleague ' Ginger, * I had now become a

MEET THE ELDERS 5-7

regular visitor to Bob's cottage, and from him we gained intro-
ductions to those he called 'the Old Hands.'

The opened upper half of the cottage door formed a frame for
the blood-red flax-buds that nodded against a prospect of stone-
ahd sheep -dotted turf and the vying blues of sea and sky. It had
become a familiar picture.

Across that picture often moved — while 'Ginger9 and I sat
listening to Bob Glass's ruminations — the head and shoulders of a
little old man who seemed to be Bob's neighbour. Truncated
by the lower hatch of the door, he appeared momentarily within
the frame as little more than a floppy, broad-brimmed hat and
a large white moustache. The hat was worn at a slightly rakish
angle, throwing over the face a shadow, from which only the
prominent moustache emerged, flecked silver by the sunlight.
We asked his name. Bob said that he was Gaetano Lavarello,
who had been cast away on Tristan fifty years before. He had
married an island girl and was now the head of a family of three
generations in the village. .

His name, we found on seeking his acquaintance, was invariably
shortened to Gaeta ; and by many of the young people, even those
unrelated to him, he was affectionately called Uncle. He was
short and stocky, but still active, dressed usually in a seaman's
blue jersey and a pair of oversize trousers that he rolled up over
his ankles. His head was disproportionately large, with a wide,
flat crown and silvery hair that curled in clusters over his ears but
had almost vanished on top. His face was the colour of sun-
kissed stone and remarkably expressive. The silvery bars of his
moustache lifted as he smiled, giving the lie to the grey, tufted
eyebrows which he dragged down in a frown of mock severity to
hide the twinkling of his eyes.

Talking to Gaeta was like looking into an old mirror which
magically gave back reflections of fifty years before; and his
Italian accent combined to droll effect with his Tristan dialect.
He had been born in the town of Camogli, near Genoa, and some
of the sunniness of his native climate had passed for ever into his
nature, surviving even the winds of Tristan. At the age of eleven

£8 ROCK OF EXILE

he had run away from the vineyards and gone to sea in a sailing
ship. His first passage, he remembered, had been from 'Swan-
see-ah' to Odessa — where the cold made him long again for
Italy. He had loaded ' teaka wood* at Rangoon and ' colda beefa*
in South America, while still no more than a boy:

*I musta could on'y been some littla fella then, for Tse on'y a
littla shorta fella now! *

He had been impressed into the Italian Navy — 't'ree years a
bluejack' — and had been glad to escape. He had visited many
British ports, including Liverpool — at the time when work was
begun on the Mersey Tunnel:

1 Guess they musta got 'eem a finisha before now! Guess they
musta gotta some sorta wagons to taka the peopla t ' rough !'

Gaeta, while still young, had seen much of the world — too
much. Three times he had been shipwrecked ; and on the third
occasion he had decided to stay where the sea had cast him.
With him had stayed his shipmate Andrea Repetto, who had
acted as interpreter. For the young Gaeta had spoken no
English. Only after the death of Andrea had he set about learning
the language of his adopted island. Many years later, when we
visited him, we found him the father of five sons and a daughter
and grandfather of twenty- two children on that island. And he
could no longer speak Italian.

The long, cabin-like room of his cottage, next to Bob Glass's,
was often crowded in the evenings while Gaeta spun his 'yarns,'
as the islanders always called them. When his meaning became
knotted in the still intractable dialect, he released it by eloquent
shrugs and gestures. His wife Jane was a neat, matronly
woman, some years younger than her husband, still fresh-
coloured but with grey hair, neatly parted. How she would
shake and shriek proudly with laughter when Gaeta told the
assembled company about the black women in Africa who carried
their babies on their backs and had breasts so long that they had
merely to *tossa' them over their shoulders to feed the babies!
None of the islanders believed Gaeta's stories, but that only
increased his power of amusing.

MEET THE ELDERS £9

'Tell you what! ' the young folk would exclaim as they left his
cottage in the evening. 'Old Gaeta can make you laugh!'
And that on Tristan was a great recommendation.

Gaeta himself had loved gaiety as much as any other seaman.
Screwing one eyebrow down in a ragged wink while the other
was cocked in roguish innocence, he would recall his nights
ashore in 'Gibee-alta' and 'Spanishland' — 'plenny musica, plenny
dancing, an5 plenny pretty gals alia night! '

But the pleasure of seafaring had proved less constant than its
hardships. In a spirit more cynical than romantic he had turned
from them fifty years ago to the arms of the island girl he had
married — without being able to speak her language. In time
Gaeta had come even 'to doubt the authenticity of his own youth-
ful exploits. Their vividness in memory had faded like the
colours of an old ship's ensign. He had become a familiar sight
on the island, returning from the Potato Patches with his fork on
his shoulder, always to the fore on the beach to wave the island
boats into a safe landing with his unmistakable gestures, an agile
little figure dodging among the rocks, as excited at the return of
any expedition as the dogs that barked and chased one another
about the beach. But Gaeta himself never went out in the boats
or aboard visiting ships. He had caught in his youth a seasickness
that would last out his life. When asked why, at the age of
twenty-five, he had turned exile, he would only reply:

'Because I was a-tired of a-being a-shipwreck/

Andrea Repetto had been a man of character, who had taught
the islanders many things and had been, in his last years, recog-
nized as their headman. His widow survived as headwoman and
was the only woman of the village we heard regularly referred to
by the title of Mrs and her surname. A visit to Mrs Repetto we
felt almost as a duty.

With one exception, her children were married and lived with
their families in cottages of their own. The exception was her
eldest son William, who lived at home — the most eligible
bachelor in the community. To his mother he was Willy ; to the

60 ROCK OF EXILE

rest of the population he was * Chief.' We knew him as the
stolid, heavily built, middle-aged man who had come on board
the ship on the day of our arrival.

The Repetto house was the biggest and best furnished in the
village, standing well back near the mountain slope. It had a
large flax garden in front and there were two steps up to the
door. Inside it was lined throughout — a feature we found to be
unusual — with timber, all of it from wrecked ships. The whole
interior suggested a ship and showed the skill and industry of the
late Andrea. Boards from decks formed the floors; masts and
spars appeared as beams and supports ; cabin doors gave access to
rooms. Over the open fire-place in the living-room had been
inserted the painted name-board of a ship, the Mabel Clark; the
brightly painted sea-chests, used as seats, were relics, we were
told, of the same ship.

Mrs Repetto, now sixty-seven, was a rather stern-looking
woman, with a brown, lined face, angular and masculine but
shrewdly intelligent. Her scanty hair was drawn severely back
and bound in a tight bun behind: like everything else about her,
we felt, it was put firmly in its place and dared not stray. She
told us something of her position and that of her son, the Chief.
Both had been officially appointed by one of the missionaries,
Father Partridge, who had been empowered by the British
Government to create a headman, a headwoman, an island
council, and other officers. The appointments had been made
but meant little to most of the islanders. The council consisted
automatically of the heads of all the households. The officers
were simply such friends and neighbours as the headman or
woman called on for assistance in matters affecting the whole
settlement. The Chief's position was particularly anomalous:
he could hold no more power than the other men were disposed
to acknowledge him, since he had no means other than the force
of his own character of imposing his will. In this respect, we
gathered, Mrs Repetto met no obstacles; but 'Willy/ she
declared, was not firm enough with some of the less energetic
villagers.

MEET THE ELDERS 6l

Ever since the time of Corporal Glass, the original founder,
who had been known as Governor Glass before he died, there had
customarily been one man to whom the other settlers turned as
leader. From the first of the Glass family the role of nominal
headship, though without the title of Governor, had passed to an
old man-of-war's man, John Taylor, alias Alexander Cotton,
frequently recalled by the islanders as 'Taylor Cotton' ; but the
actual leadership had quickly become associated rather with the
Dutchman, Peter Green (originally Groen), from whom the
numerous Green families in the village were descended. He had
evidently been a man of strong but gentle character, greatly loved
and respected on the island. He had filled with dignity a posi-
tion which he had defined with simplicity to Prince Alfred, the
Duke of Edinburgh, during his cruise in 1867: 'I am in no way
superior to the others. We are all equal. I merely speak for
them/

This feeling for equality had remained traditional among the
settlers and tended to restrict the power of the nominated head-
man. In any event, his duties were mainly formal. As there
was no record of crime in the settlement, there had been no need
of a magistrate — and the most effective policeman was public
opinion. In trading with visiting ships or welcoming travellers
and expeditions a spokesman was necessary ; and in the absence of
a minister the headman had often conducted marriage, christening,
and burial services, as a ship's captain may. For these functions
it was natural that one of the more educated members of the
community should be chosen. Our friend Bob Glass had at one
time enjoyed the distinction, after his return from South Africa,
and still told us with pride of the 'sarmons' in which he had
displayed his 'laminV Eventually Andrea Repetto had been
designated Chief by the missionary and on his death his son Willy
(William Peter) had succeeded, his powers further circumscribed
by the presence of our own naval garrison, with its padre and
surgeon commander.

On the other hand Mrs Repetto had acquired, as much by
the force of her own character as by her standing as headwoman,

62 ROCK OF EXILE

a position of real influence among the women of the island. She
was the repository of much knowledge of home medicine and
midwifery that had been handed down among the old women and
that was more essential to the life of the settlement than the
formal ministrations of the headman. Moreover she was ready
to interfere in any matters when she thought necessary. On one
occasion she had led a party of her henchwomen to the home of
Long Lena, the laziest housewife in the village, and had cleaned
out the cottage. When Lena had shaken her fist at the women as
they were leaving and had called insults after them, Mrs Repetto
had brought the matter before the Island Council. The offender
had been sentenced to sit for a day in specially improvised stocks
on the patch of grass in the middle of the village and to be
excluded from church on three consecutive Sundays — a severe
punishment where the weekly church-going was a valued form of
social enjoyment. This was the only instance we heard of in
which the community had had to take action against a ' criminal. '
The headwoman exercised the same strictness over her own
home. She had brought up a large family to observe rigid rules
of conduct and assured us that her children had always been the
better for a good 'hammering' when they misbehaved. Her
household was characterized by a strong matriarchal discipline,
which extended not only to the Chief but also to her married sons
and daughters. In that respect the house of Repetto was excep-
tional in the village.

The typical family governance on Tristan was patriarchal and
the women's position was subordinate, even subservient. An
example was the household of the oldest inhabitant, Sam Swain,
whose imperious will — after eighty-six years of life — still held
sway over a home as crude and disorderly as that of Mrs Repetto
was impeccable. Old Sam himself was an imperial figure with
full white beard. His face was dark brown, marking his descent
from that Thomas Swain, whose rash vow had united him to the
Negress among the early settlers. But Sam's features had
nobility: a high, wide brow traced with fine lines; silvery hair

MEET THE ELDERS 63

flowing back from a well-defined hair-line ; large dark eyes and
arched grey brows that gave him a touch of arrogance. He was
proud of his ancestor for two reasons: first, because, as his tomb-
stone showed, Thomas Swain had lived to the age of a hundred
and two ; secondly, because he had served under Nelson in the
Victory and had been, according to the legend preserved among his
descendants on Tristan, the very seaman who had caught Nelson
in his arms when he fell at Trafalgar.

Sam Swain showed signs of rivalling the longevity of his grand-
father. He could still hop agilely across the 'watxon' that
flowed near his door, and he seemed to carry his stick as much for
flourish as for support. His laugh was hearty and revealed a
strong set of teeth. His voice could still deepen to a stentorian
bellow when he was crossed. In his straight-backed chair in the
middle of his slovenly room he would sit with his favourite
grandson playing at his feet, and visitors approaching the door
would hear the peremptory thump of his stick on the floor and
the ring of his voice summoning his daughter or his son-in-law,
who lived with him: 'Rachel! Harbert!' Once a month one
of his sons came to trim the old man's beard, of which he was very
vain. The moustaches swept down over the corners of his
mouth, but he would deftly lift them back to claim a kiss from
each of the young girls who visited him.

Old Sam was a great pipe-smoker, yet he had not taken up
smoking until the age of seventy-four. He had saved the pleasure
till his old age.

'What did you smoke before we came, when you couldn't get
tobacco?' we asked.

'Dockleaves/ heanswered, ' They 's rale hawt on the tongue,
but they bu'n foine.'

Sam knew how to do many things which had been practised
by the first generation of settlers, things unknown to his neigh-
bours. He grew a variety of vegetables unseen in the other
gardens. And he said he could make matches. They consisted
of slivers of wood dipped in melted sulphur, which he obtained
from a small outcrop at the far end of Big Beach.

64 ROCK OF EXILE

* Do they Bum well ? ' we asked.

'Sure, they bu'n foine,' he said, 'so lawng as you-all got a
foire or a tinder-box fa' to loight 'em.'

The older men of Tristan seemed more individual than the
younger ones and were certainly better talkers. There was Big
John Glass, brother of Bob Glass and a few years younger. He
was a noted humorist. Even in his appearance he managed to
combine the comical with the impressive. He always wore an
old sea-captain's cap, complete with tarnished gold braid on the
peak, which he had bartered on board a visiting ship. His voice
alternated between a deep, hoarse rumble and a cracked, falsetto
squeak — the result probably of pitching it too high, as the
islanders always did, when shouting against the wind out in the
boats. Nearly seventy now, he still showed the remains of a fine
physique, with exceptionally broad shoulders and immense hands,
In his younger days Big John had been rated the strongest man on
the island, credited with the ability to break a bullock's neck
with those great hands of his.

Another leader of the elder generation was Henry Green, a
widower, who lived alone in a cottage at the eastern end of the
village, close under the mountain. He was a quiet, self-reliant
little man, and although seventy-eight he was still active and
pulled his weight in his boat. His head was covered with a tight
mat of white, woolly hair, like a knitted skull-cap, contrasting
vividly with the brown of his small, wizened face. Henry was
the local authority on ship 'wracks'; he knew them all and
welcomed strangers to whom he could tell the histories. Some-
times, when entertaining a visitor in the evening, he would break
into a long, quavering solo — usually a song of shipwreck. At the
end of it, he would sit silent, gazing into the crackling wood fire
while the wind mourned in the chimney. One would imagine
that he was remembering some sea tragedy of his own; but
Henry, unlike Gaeta and Bob Glass, had lived his whole life on the
island where he was born. His only excursion had been as guide
for the explorers of the Quest on a trip that included Nightingale

MEET THE ELDERS 6$

and Inaccessible and also Gough Island, 2^0 miles to the south —
and Henry had not * reckoned much' to Gough Island.

These and others like them were the elders of the settlement —
the ' old hands. ' They had set the standards, and it was right that
we should come to know the village first through them. But we
looked also for friendship among our own generation of islanders .

CHAPTER TEN

The Spinning-wheel

THE NEW YEAR had brought a new animation to the village scene.
Women sat out of doors knitting or carding wool ; some washed
clothes at the stream, pounding them with large stones to loosen
the dirt, spreading them on garden walls to dry ; children played
cdown on the grass' in front of the settlement, their sharp voices
rising above the 'quanking' of geese in the 'watrons' and the
bleating of sheep from the slopes.

Early in the year the sheep were sheared. First, the boys and
the dogs went up the mountain and drove them down. They
came in their hundreds, sweeping over the common, engulfing
the village — rams with curly horns, tucking their chins into their
fleecy necks to produce deep-throated 'ba-a-aV of indignation,
ewes with outstretched necks following the rams, lambs bleating
peevishly after the ewes, boys yipping, dogs yapping, as the
avalanche swirled over the grassy level in front of die cottages.
There the flocks were left milling together, until finally they
settled down to their grazing, which had been interrupted only for
a few minutes by this wild, dog-driven dash from the mountain.

66

THE SPINNING-WHEEL 67

The shearing was done in the evenings, after the men returned
from work at the Potato Patches. The sheep were penned about
fifteen at a time behind frail hurdles in the stone paddocks.
They were released one by one and as each sheep came out its
owner would claim it. Rolling it off its feet, he would grasp its
head between his knees and swiftly clip away the matted fleece
with a pair of small hand-shears.

When carded and spun — operations that might be carried on
indoors by the women at any time of the year — this wool provided
a lasting supply of yarn for the ever-hungry knitting-needles.
Woollen garments formed the entire underwear and a great part
of the outerwear of both men and women. It was the almost
incessant task of wives and mothers to knit stockings and guern-
seys for their families. Every minute that could be spared from
working in the house or assisting at the Patches or on the beach
was devoted by the women to knitting. They walked about
knitting, sometimes in two's and three's, paying neighbourly
visits during the warm evenings, clicking their needles at one
another as they talked.

The wool was soft and white, when washed, and was never
dyed. A small stock of coloured worsted, bartered from 'out-
side/ was kept in most houses for the brightening of stockings or
white 'ganzeys/ Indeed a ganzey was not considered much of a
ganzey unless it had several rings of 'marking' wool round the
bottom. The same applied to the tops of men's stockings, which
were always worn outside their trousers. There was a special
language of * markings' that gradually revealed itself to us as the
courting conventions of the dance had. When a girl received
with favour the attentions of a young man, she would knit for him
a pair of stockings, and — later — a ganzey ; and the strength of her
affection was told in the number and brightness of the markings.
When he appeared in a ganzey emblazoned with four such marks
of her love, it was known that he had reached that stage of ack-
nowledged tenderness in which he was permitted to make her
moccasins for her, in place of her father. On such evidence
relatives could expect a wedding.

68 ROCK OF EXILE

Before the wool could be knitted, it had to pass through several
processes. First, it had to be combed or 'picked/ to remove the
knotted lumps, then it received its preliminary washing; next, it
was oiled slightly, to make it cling together better for carding.
The purpose of 'carding* was to shape it into rolls suitable for
spinning. It was done by means of two hand 'cards' — small,
rectangular pieces of wood, each fitted with a short handle and
faced on one side with stubbly bristles, which might simply be
bits of fine, stiff wire driven into the wood close together. One
card was held, bristles uppermost, on the knee and a handful of
wool flicked on to it. By skilful brushing with the bristles of the
other card, this wool was teased into a tight little roll, which was
then removed.

The carding was done mostly by the older women, who often
formed little schools or carding-parties, where their tongues
might wag as their cards scraped. On sunny evenings, three or
four neighbours — such as Charlotte Glass, Gaeta's Jane, and
John Glass's wife Mima — would sit in a row on a bench at the
'gable-end* of one of their cottages, carding for hours. The
action of their wrists seemed tireless and quite automatic: it never
distracted them from their gossip. Like their knitting, it was
the most social of occupations.

Spinning was the work of the girls, who were sometimes
'hired out' between several families for this purpose. It was
done on huge, old-fashioned wheels, as tall as a man — the kind
at which the spinner stands. Smaller, more modern ones, at
which the spinner might sit and treadle, had been sent out once
from England, but the island women had never learnt how to use
them. Spinning continued to be done on the high, stand-up
wheels, turned by hand, which had been taken there in the
nineteenth century Their use required a great deal of energy,
skill, and grace of movement — the grace being an essential part
of the skill. The occupation displayed a young woman's figure
to advantage.

In warm weather, this work — like the carding — was often
done out of doors, though not in groups. It was the intermittent

THE SPINNING-WHEEL 69

whirring of a spinning-wheel and the sound of a clear, girlish
voice singing snatches of song in the intervals that led me one
evening through an opening of a garden wall into the presence of
Emily Hagan. She was alone in a little yard between the house
and a large flax enclosure. The ancient wheel stood on four
stubby legs in the shade of the wall, and near it was a primitive
chair on which lay a heap of carded rolls of wool, like fluffy tails,
ready for spinning. Emily had just stepped back, her right arm
lifted high in a curve, the strand of wool running smoothly out of
her hand as the wheel spun — when I stepped through the opening.
Her arm remained stationary in the air, her mouth open around
the last uttered syllable of her song, as she stared aghast. The
shock of my sudden appearance had checked even the usual
impulse to run into the house. She stood transfixed in her pose
like a waxwork figure. The wheel whirred slowly to a stand-
still ; the strand of wool running from her hand to the spool
stretched thinner and thinner — and snapped. It was like the
snapping of a nerve.

'Now you've done it! J I accused.

Her only answer was a blush that mantled the whole of her
ripe-cheeked face. But she dropped her strained immobility
and, lowering her eyes, took another fluffy tail of wool from the
pile. With fingers that had just learnt how to fumble, she began
to * splice ' it on to the ragged end of the torn strand. Her white
blouse had short sleeves — unusual on Tristan — revealing the soft
upper part of her arms. Her elbows looked rough and slightly
red by contrast. With the fingers of her left hand she twirled the
wooden spokes of the big wheel, then moved backwards with a
light, tripping step, like a dance step, her right hand drawing the
wool gently back and upwards as it ran on to the spool; her wrist
arched like a swan's neck. For an instant her eyes were raised
to mine, but dropped immediately. The colour flowed again
beneath her dusky skin and her movements became stiff and
awkward.

' Do you mind if I sit and watch you spin ? '

She made no reply, but her glance followed me apprehensively

JO ROCK OF EXILE

as I took a seat on the chair, gathering into my lap the pile of
woolly tails. As the spool devoured the strand that was running
from her uplifted right hand, she allowed the wheel to run down
again and her arm fell to her side in an attitude of helplessness . I
offered her a fresh roll of wool from the pile I had appropriated.
She stood still for several seconds before slowly reaching out her
hand to take it. A shy smile crinkled the corners of her eyes but
never really got as far as her lips. And the fire of embarrassment
glowed so brightly in her cheeks that I felt compelled to turn my
inspection upon the cottage.

It was a large one and had once been painted white. Four
hollow-worn steps led up to the front door, and in the far
corner of the yard was another door giving entry to a lower
storey, the * cellar' which made the Hagan house unique on the
island.

The girl's composure was partially restored and several more
rolls of wool had been spun out, when her mother appeared at
the half-door at the top of the steps and called:

'Hemly, wheah's you' manners, gal? Waffa' you don't
hakse anybawdy up the house for a cuppa drink? '

Then, looking at me momentarily and opening the bottom half
of the door as a gesture of invitation, she hazarded a 'Good
hevenin' ' as she withdrew into the dark interior.

I had risen from my chair, still holding the pile of carded wool,
but made no move towards the steps. Emily was faced with the
ordeal of making the formal offer of hospitality, as instructed by
her mother.

It came at last in a small, breathless whisper through the spokes
of the spinning-wheel. They were the first words I heard her
speak:

'If you wouldn't moind going up to the house, Momma will
make you-all a drink '

She broke off and stood watching me with an almost anxious
expectancy. I gathered that I was intended to climb the steps
and enter the house alone. The girl showed no sign of con-
ducting or accompanying me. She seemed, rather, to be

THE SPINNING-WHEEL 7 I

hoarding some sort of grudge, perhaps at the prolonged inter-
ruption of her spinning. Yet, when I was seated inside the
cottage and drinking the cup of strong, black 'tea' with which
I had been plied by her mother, I heard no more of the whirring
and clicking of the ancient wheel in the yard outside.

Where Emily had gone I don't know, but it was half an hour
later, when I had exhausted the slender conversational powers of
her mother, and when the gathering dusk made necessary the
lighting of a bird-oil lamp on the table beside my drained cup,
that I became aware of a white-clad figure in the doorway of the
room: the tiny, leaping flame revealed it leaning motionless
against the door-post. From soft shadow the girl's eyes held me
in silent scrutiny.

*By the good Massy! ' exclaimed the mother. 'How long 'at
gal been stood there watchin' like 'at? Hemly, ain't you got no
manners?'

With a change of tone, as she recovered from the slight shock
of seeing the girl, she asked: 'What you done wid the wheel?'

Emily pointed out through the door.

4 Well, if you ain't gonna do no more spinnin' to-night, you
best go an' put the wheel in the cellar.'

Disregarding the mother's protest, I rose quickly.

'Let me carry it for you.'

Down in the yard, I lifted the tall wheel on its four-legged
stand while the girl flitted ahead to open the door of the cellar,
which was like a cave beneath the house and to which I descended
by a slight incline in the corner of the yard. Staggering a little
under the ungainly wheel, I heard a faint exclamation of solici-
tude inside the cellar. I was aware of the girl there in the dark-
ness as I set the spinning-wheel down on the earthen floor, then
she seemed not to be there any more. I had not heard her move,
but when I emerged she was waiting outside.

The night air was an enveloping golden presence as we stood
at the break in the wall. I was conscious of bare, rounded arms
and the fragrance of thickly clustered hair. The lingering day
was full of noises. As the sky darkened to a deep umbrageous

72 ROCK OF EXILE

blue, speckled with starlight, and the village was swallowed by
darkness at the foot of the mountain, from somewhere in that
blackness came the throaty plaint of an old sheep, like a voice
from the mountain. From that other obscurity, silver-gleaming
below the cliffs, came the muttered irony of the surf.

The girl waited only a few minutes before her full lips breathed
'Good night1 and she slipped towards the house.

'Shall I come to see you again?' I called softly.

She may or may not have answered 'Yes.' If she did, it was
probably from politeness.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Unfriendly Neighbour

AFTER three months on Tristan we had contracted the islanders'
habit of observing — with an interest suspiciously akin to boredom
— the weather signs of the sea and sky: the ground swell, the
white caps, the extent of the lee, the direction and speed of the
cloud movement. Our gauge of visibility was the grim outline
of Inaccessible Island as seen through the west window of the hut
on Herald Point. Every morning at sunrise the operator on duty
consulted that mass of rock eighteen miles south-west of Tristan ;
every evening at sunset he observed it again fiercely silhouetted
against the slash of amber sky above the horizon, then fading in
the deepening glow until it vanished like a sinking ship. This
disappearing trick gave Inaccessible an air of mystery. There was
always the query : would it be there again the next day ?

Often, as far as we could see, it was not. For days the island
would be lost in the sea mist. Then one morning it would
re-emerge startlingly clear, with all its crags boldly outlined as if
treading the water towards us. Across the intervening sea-way
it seemed to exert a remote but baleful influence on the human

73

74 ROCK OF EXILE

intruders on Tristan, forbidding yet challenging an invasion of its
own shores. If the peak of Tristan was a disturbing host to have
looming always at one's shoulder, Inaccessible was a scowling
neighbour that one felt obliged to visit, even in the certainty
of a hostile reception. The islanders made the excursion
early in the year to collect guano. Curiosity made me join
them.

The morning was fine and sunny, the sky a clear blue ; a light
breeze was freshening. After the rush of preparation at a very-
early hour, there were the usual delays and uncertainties before
the trip was started. Eventually the women and children on the
beach had kissed the men good-bye, some tearfully, as if the three
or four days* separation might be extended to a lifetime ; six boats
had been pushed off and pulled clear of the kelp. There we
stood by for the word 'Hyshe away' until the women, halted at
the top of the bank, had responded to the customary three cheers
from the combined crews of the boats.

I was in the Wild Rose or, as she was more often called, the
long-boat. She was reckoned the best boat for sailing but
slow for pulling, being slightly heavier than the others. We
had been the last crew to put off from the shore and pull clear
of the kelp reef. The favourable breeze made it possible to
'hyshe' sail 'fair off the beach/ and the long-boat picked up
her lead.

There were five islanders in the boat, of whom the only one I
really knew was 'Bunty' Rogers, the brother of Kenneth, our
mess-boy. The other hands were two of old Gaeta's sons,
Robert and Lawrence Lavarello, with Robert's son Hilden, and
a dark, long-faced fellow wearing the discarded cap of a ship's
officer: this I learned to be Emily's father, David Hagan. Leaning
back in the bows, relaxed to the gentle lurching of the boat, he
smoked a pipe and watched with a slow smile but never contri-
buted to the conversation.

Robert Lavarello was considered one of the best helmsmen.
His commands were issued in a quiet, almost apologetic tone that

UNFRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR J £

mingled with the soothing voice of the sea. The breeze sang in
the cordage. On shore it had seemed a very gentle breeze but
now it proved brisk enough to send the boats skimming like white
cloudlets over the water. We travelled at a surprising speed.
Occasionally an extra 'puff' would billow the sail of our craft
and send her flying across the waves in what the islanders called a
'sleigh ride* : the water rushed with a bubbling sound under the
canvas bows, breaking into two foaming sluices, as the boat raced
into a trough and over several crests before losing speed. Spray
flew in our faces; the tang of salt was on our lips. The men
laughed, and sang out to one another from boat to boat, their
deep voices pitched high and carrying thinly across the water.
In the long-boat the sail was continually being lowered to take in
another reef or to wait for the other boats to catch up, for it was
considered discourteous to make the destination ahead of Chief's
boat, Canton (pronounced CANTon). Robert called softly for a
tightening of a slackening of the jib ; the heavy boom of the main-
sail thumped rhythmically on the gunwale, its tip often breaking
water as the boat heeled over.

From the sea I had my first unimpeded view of the peak of
Tristan, which had been shawled in mist on the day of our arrival
at the island. I was surprised to see that the great precipice
rising up to what the islanders called the 'base' and comprising
our whole prospect of the mountain from the settlement was in
fact only a third of the total height and that the low plateau on
which the village stood was a mere ledge appearing from a
distance to be raised barely above the line of the surf. For over
two hours we watched that imperious peak furling its grey dignity
about its shoulders, receding into its own mist, yet the smaller,
grimmer mass of Inaccessible seemed no nearer. The third
island of the group, Nightingale, was now in sight twenty miles
away to the south. It looked a' peaceful, friendly little island,
with a more irregular profile than its bigger neighbours.

It was the middle of the afternoon before Inaccessible began to
present itself in clearer detail. Soon we could see the white
streak of the waterfall, marking the locality of Salt Beach, where

76 ROCK OF EXILE

we should land. As we came in closer I noticed trees high up
on the 'base/ larger and more luxuriant than any on the home
island. The fall cascaded into a slight bay, hardly a bay at all,
a mere indentation of the cliff-face, with a curving ribbon of
beach. Here we lowered sail and waited our turn to land. The
Canton went in first. In the choppy water of the bay the other
boats bobbed and pranced like restive horses, their motion
sickening.

Around and above us rose the cliffs, echoing to the wild cries
of disturbed sea-birds. The walls seemed to cast a dark, damp,
forbidding shadow over the expedition. The island had an air of
belonging to a remote world, alien to human contact. It seemed
to brood in the solitude of mid ocean, instinct with a life of its
own. Its only inhabitants were the birds that wheeled, scream-
ing, about its craggy sides and the noisy penguins that nested in
the long tussock-grass above the beach. There was a wildness
and a strangeness different from that of Tristan — the aloofness
of a place unfrequented by men.

The wailing of the sea-birds was echoed several octaves lower
by the moaning of the waterfall, which poured over the rim of
the mountain through a V-shaped cleft revealing a vivid segment
of green vegetation. The face of the cliff was matted with long,
coarse tussock-grass, which hung shaggily in a great swaying
curtain down the precipice. That which grew near and behind
the cascade was wet and luxuriant, a glistening stairway for the
leaping water.

One after another the boats were run ashore, and the first job
to be done when they were all unloaded was to haul them up to
the ridge of sloping shingle, where it gave place to the miniature
jungle of tussock that extended from the cliffs to the beach.
Here each boat was overturned and canted up at one side, the
raised gunwale being propped up by a wall hurriedly constructed
of the biggest stones that could be found. A doorway was left
in the front. All the other spaces were blocked in with pebbles.
In this way the boat became a tiny, windowless cottage, with a
square hole of a doorway and a high, arched roof of wood and

UNFRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR 77

canvas sloping down to the ground at the back. We collected
armfuls of tussock and spread them over the pebbles inside, to
soften the floor that was to be our bed.

There was drift-wood along the beach ; soon fires were smoking
and pots of water and cans of potatoes were on the boil. After
the meal I walked on the shore as far as possible — a distance of
less than a mile. Beyond that the cliffs dropped sheer into the
sea again. The beach itself varied in width from about five to
thirty yards and was strewn with rocks and gigantic boulders that
had rolled down from the mountain. Behind it ran a low escarp-
ment, rising at some points to a height of twenty feet, at others
dropping almost to the level of the beach. On top of this bank
waved the tussock. The whole of this side of the island was
covered with this growth. High on the walls it looked like
green matting; lower down it hung like tangled, shaggy hair;
from the foot-slopes it rolled in gleaming, swaying waves to end
in a ragged, upstanding fringe above the low forehead of the
beach. Only in a few places was it interrupted by bare patches
and pinnacles of rock.

Walking below the verge of this forest of grass, I was almost
deafened by the honking of thousands of penguins that crowded
within its depths, out of sight. At a point where the tussock
came down to the level of the beach, as if spilt over, I entered
and was overtopped by eight-foot grasses. The sea was lost to
sight. Stooping under arches of green blades, I was met at every
turn by indignant penguins that made no effort to move out of
my way. They shuffled about like little men, all very busy, very
noisy and very short-tempered, occasionally bumping into one
another as they marched along the narrow tracks that criss-
crossed among the clumps of grass roots, sometimes even
stretching out their necks to peck vindictively at the legs of the
intruder ; I was glad to be wearing sea-boots. I felt like Gulliver
in a Lilliputian jungle.

The islanders were already taking advantage of the fine evening
to collect guano from the rich deposits which lined the floors
of these miniature galleries and green aisles. I came upon them

78 ROCK OF EXILE

at intervals busy with their spades filling the bags they had brought
with them.

I wandered among the tussock until I began to feel lost in a
strange underworld. At length I emerged, and in the lingering,
mellow twilight walked back along the beach. Tiny 'starchies,'
or land-thrushes, kept running out of the tussock as if chased out
by the inhospitable penguins. The boom of the surf accom-
panied me back to the camp, where the islanders were preparing
to retire under the upturned boats. Each boat formed a tem-
porary house for the members of its crew ; I found my way to the
'house' bearing the name zsoy p/r^ , where Bunty had already laid
out my blanket on the pebbles. It was a hard bed, but dry and
warm. With the prospect of a full day's work on the morrow,
the men wasted no time in talk before sleep. Pipes were tapped
out and placed with little tins of precious tobacco on the thwarts
of the inverted boat, which formed convenient shelves over our
heads. An empty guano bag was stretched across the doorway as
a curtain; in the darkness we fell asleep.

I must have slept soundly, for the next thing of which I was
conscious was Bunty crawling into the 'hut7 with a cup of hot
* drink' in the morning. Outside rain was pouring down. I was
comfortable enough under a blanket, though the strewn grasses
did little to soften the impact of the pebbles, which seemed to
have grown sharper during the night. Hilden Lavarello and
David Hagan were still lying in their blankets at the far end of the
'hut.5 Lawrence, lacing up his moccasins, kept up a lively banter,
mainly- haranguing the weather. The sack in the doorway had
been hitched back at one corner. I supped Bunty's black brew,
listening to the tattoo of the rain on the taut canvas of the boat
and the steadier, heavier dripping outside from the gunwale —
the eaves of our house.

We were compelled by the rain to spend the morning stretched
out on our blankets, leaning against the boat's side, smoking,
talking, chaffing, passing jocular remarks and fills of tobacco from
one to another. David Hagan puffed placidly at his pipe in his

UNFRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR J$

corner under the bows: it seemed to be his character to look on
benignly from a corner, smoking the pipe of peace. I lay back
and contemplated the rafter-like pattern of the arched roof made
by the ribs of the boat. Eventually Robert, the helmsman,
thrust his head into the hut to announce that the rain had stopped
and a fire had been lit. We crawled out into a wan, watery
daylight. After a meal the work of collecting guano went
forward. The filled bags made a slowly mounting pile on the
beach.

Just behind our camp, near the waterfall, were the remains of a
stone-built cottage, the last witness of an attempt which fourteen,
of the men from Tristan had made, a few years earlier, to start a
companion settlement on Inaccessible. The settlers had brought
sheep and pigs across from the main island and had built the
cottage and a storehouse. The sheep had found their way up on
to the plateau, where they thrived; the pigs had become dan-
gerous beasts lurking in the tussock forest. Of the little store-
house only one gable-end remained, looking like the forsaken,
altar of some savage deity. The cottage seemed to have sunk
into the undergrowth. Its roof sagged and grasses sprouted
through the thatch. The door-posts still stood, like the pro-
jecting ribs of a wasting carcass. Nature had defeated the scheme
with an ease which made it all the more evident how precarious
was the hold these exiles had, even after a century of settlement,
on their own island.

In the grass about the abandoned hut was to be found the little
'island cock/ formally named Atlantisea Rogers! after the Rev.
R. M. C. Rogers, who had been the third missionary on Tristan
and the first to visit Inaccessible. The bird is a species of flight-
less rail which has long been extinct in the rest of the world.
Owing to its inability to fly, it cannot migrate even to Tristan or
Nightingale Island. It is a black bird with a red bill, similar to a
common English moorhen, but smaller. It runs over the pebbles
on frail black legs but is difficult to catch; and it is so delicate that
it does not survive in captivity long enough to be carried alive to
Tristan. The other bird-life on Inaccessible includes a kind of

80 ROCK OF EXILE

finch and a 'noddy' or wood-pigeon, which in spite of its name is
a sea-bird. Most of the species familiar on the main island were
to be seen in greater numbers on Inaccessible: long- winged
fulmars, known by the islanders as * black eaglets' ; a kind of tern
which they called a 'king bird' ; blue petrels or * night birds' ;
another bird of the petrel family called a 'pediunker' ; the 4pio*
or sooty albatross ; and occasionally the great white 'wandering'
albatross, known by the seaman's traditional name for it, the
'goney.' On rare occasions I had seen the bird wheeling in
its graceful flight over Tristan, but none ever nested there and
only a few on Inaccessible. When the islanders caught one,
they used the hollow bones from its wide, powerful wings as
pipe-stems.

Lastly, of course, there was that noisy and prolific amphibian,
the penguin — not the smooth-headed type, but the rock-hopper,
with a crest of black and yellow 'tossels' forming an angry, war-
like topknot on his head.

In the evening all these birds combined to form a mournful
chorus bewailing our presence on the island. When the guano-
collecting was finished, all the men assembled round a fire that
had been lit close under the cliff-face. We sat in a tight circle
gazing intently at the flames, our backs turned on the sea, as
if to shut out the wild sighing of the surge and the keening of
its birds. The cry of the petrel was particularly disturbing, a
sharp sobbing wail that sounded intolerably like that of a child
in. distress.

To repel the sense of desolation with which the island was
trying to destroy us, a sing-song was proposed, but the natural
diffidence of the islanders interposed an obstacle. Many of them
had good bass voices but at first no one was willing to sing a solo.
Attempts were made to persuade George Glass, or 'Gillie' as he
was called, but he would only reiterate in an embarrassed rumble :
'Oi doan' know no sawngs! ' or ' Oi ain't got no wice! ' At last,
without preliminary, Arthur Repetto burst into the opening
verse of a long ballad about the ship Golden Wanitee. He was
singing in a high, strained voice, far above his normal deep

UNFRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR Si

speaking tones. With every chorus the rest of the men would
join in:

'An* they sink 'im in the lowlands,
Lowlands, lowlands,

An* they sink 'im in the lowlands low.9

This song went on for a long time and was hardly less doleful
than the sobbing of the petrels. Afterwards old Henry Green
proffered a quavering solo, then Dick Swain sang a rollicking but
unintelligible song about a certain 'Whisky Wan.'

In the intervals between the singing, the surf chafed at the
shore. The baffling, inhuman enmity of the place seemed to
take the heart out of the singers, and as we retired to sleep
beneath the upturned boats, the screaming of the sea-birds
seemed to have a sharp note of derision. They swooped low
over our heads, their wings cleaving the dark air.

The next morning brought the inevitable indecision as to
whether the wind and sea were suitable for the return voyage to
Tristan. The men gathered in conclave about the Canton, where
Chief's deep voice resounded with the accession of authority that
came to him when he was away from the preponderating influence
of his mother. There was no need for hurry, it was agreed; the
wind was in the wrong quarter, it was agreed ; nevertheless they
would attempt the crossing, it was agreed. The 'huts' were
demolished, the boats righted, the bags of guano loaded, and one
after another the crews pushed off and pulled away to hoist sail.

It took us seven hours to return the distance that we had
travelled in three. The boats drifted too far out in the ocean and
could find no breeze. The sails flapped lamely against the masts
and the light craft were dandled up and down for hours by the
waves, while the sun scorched us unmercifully. When at last
we did arrive off Little Beach, we found almost the whole popu-
lation of Edinburgh Settlement waiting there to welcome us back
and to assist in hauling up the loaded boats. As we rose on the
surf I recognized the sturdy little figure of Gaeta capering at the
edge of the water to catch the rope tossed by David Hagan from

82 ROCK OF EXILE

the bows of the Wild Rose. On the beach Charlotte Glass waited
with her 'pawt o' tea' and two cups, one for her son Wilson,
who was witti his stepbrothers in the British Trader, and one for
myself. I had a sense of homecoming, of being welcomed back
in the same terms as the islanders. David Hagan^ I observed, was
being greeted with a touch of soft lips by his daughter Emily.
My own attention, however, was proprietorily demanded by old
Charlotte.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Wheel of Fortune

A CHANGE had come over our exile. I felt it in myself and saw
it in others. Partly, of course, it was due to the change of
weather.

As I leaned over the half-door of the hut on Herald Point an
early morning fragrance hung in the air — was it the memory of
yesterday's heat or the promise of to-day's? Strung out along
the sky, cotton-wove clouds, poised still, patterned the sea with
their white reflections. In the east, where the sun was streaming
through, they gathered in a bank of dazzling whiteness, below
which the sea shone serene and blueless.

I looked at Inaccessible — an acquaintance now, however un-
friendly. Out of the western haze it emerged as a blur of pale
cliffs topped with a fringe of greenish-grey. Rising slowly from
its southern tip to a lofty forepeak, it came into view like a low-
sterned cruiser, with a drift of cloud trailing like smoke from
its crest.

The world around the hut was wide awake. In the fore-
ground, where the turf at the cliff-edge made a green rim against
the sea, sheep — 'blocked home' since the shearing — were
already grazing, taking little foreward runs between nibbling,

83

84. ROCK OF EXILE

keeping their muzzles in readiness a few inches above the grass as
they moved. They followed one another like automatons ; their
tails flicked as if by mechanism, and the yellow-flecked eyes that
they raised for a moment to look at the man in the doorway had a
mild, unseeing blankness.

It was especially at this early hour that I was aware of the
change. Leaving the hut, I glanced up, as always, at the moun-
tain— those high slopes of rock, scantily clothed with drab-green
moss — or was it really grass? There was a curious power of
vitality in the sombre, grey walls of the extinct volcano. They
no longer seemed oppressive, as they had when we arrived.
There was a calmness of spirit to be derived from their strength,
from the stillness up there, the dark quietude at the tops of the
gulches, the stern, unavoidable gaze of that graven face.

The change was really a clearer perception. It had come
slowly — yet, in the end, suddenly. At a moment when the sun
was gleaming on the backs of the grasses and trying to hide in a
friendly haze the bald head of the mountain — making it seem
farther away, so that it could be seen more objectively — the
realization had come: here was peace and dignity and a still, quiet
beauty.

In myself the new outlook had something, too, to do with the
growing familiarity of a white dress. When, during February,
David Hagan went away again with the other men to collect guano
on Nightingale Island, I did not go ; and in his absence I came to'
know fairly well the rest of his household.

Once, in the time of Andrew Hagan, the American whaling
captain who had been the first of that name to settle on Tristan,
the family had been the wealthiest on the island — wealth being
measured, of course, in sheep and cattle. Now it was one of the
poorest. David did not even own a yoke of oxen: he had to
borrow from a neighbour. But the family still lived in the old
house, which was one of the biggest and most solidly built in the
village. The interior was divided into two parts, one occupied
by David, his wife and four children, the other by his widowed
mother, old Susan Hagan.

A 'CARDING' PARTY

i & 2. The wool, after being
'picked' to remove knots and
lumps, is slightly oiled and
then worked between the
wooden ' cards ' into rolls
ready for spinning. (Emma
Green)

C Alice Glass— Sidney's wife— and Margaret Repetto)

A 'CARDING' PARTY (3)

<' L

A BULLOCK 'TRAIN' BRINGS WOOD
FROM THE MOUNTAIN

ISLAND BOATS AT THE START OF AN EXPEDITION

The men wave their caps and reply to three cheers from the women on the

beach before hoisting sail.

HOISTING SAIL

THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE 8j*

The first time I saw her at the house I recognized the widow as
the old woman I had seen at the far end of Big Beach collecting
wood with the two urchins, * Grannie Toodie,' I now under-
stood, had been their rendering of Grannie Susie. The urchins
themselves greeted me anew with a mixture of shyness and famili-
arity. The elder of the pair, Donald, at seven years old still
spoke imperfectly and was obviously less intelligent than his
brother. The only thing positive about him was his love of the
seashore. He was as amphibious as a young seal. It was his
mother's incessant complaint about him that 'all 'e ever wanna do
is pynte for 'at owd beach.' Several times a day he would
return home sodden with brine. In all other matters he was
ruled — and often fooled — by his brother Piers, a bright-eyed,
saucy-faced imp of four, who in features greatly resembled his
sister Emily. The boys referred to each other as 'buddy' which
meant brother, and to Emily as 'tiddy' meaning sister. There
was another sister, Angela, a silent, shrinking, watchful child,
three or four years younger than Emily, with great black eyes
like polished bosses . She resembled her mother.

Emily, the eldest of the family, for all her shyness of the
moment, had an abundant vitality and a sparkle to her eyes that
suggested a love of mischief equal to her little brother's. She
was still spinning on the first few evenings when I saw her, but the
wheel had been carried up into the main room of the house.
This may have been because she feared the embarrassment of
being surprised again alone in the yard ; but it may equally have
been because she saw no reason why I should sit in the house
talking with her mother while she was left outside with no better
company than her spinning-wheel.

For days the acquaintance made little progress. She displayed
before me all the arts and graces of a skilful spinner, and some-
times when I turned quickly from speaking to her mother I found
the girl's dark gaze fixed on me. She would blush and even
smile. But she would not talk. It is true that conversation was
virtually impossible as long as the spinning continued. The
whirling of the big wheel set up such a rumbling vibration in the

86 ROCK OF EXILE

wooden-floored room that I could do little more than nod and
smile my appreciation of hospitable words or gestures. Such
complete remarks as achieved utterance at all were wedged
uneasily into the brief silences when Emily was splicing a fresh
roll of wool to her yarn.

A climax came when I arrived one evening to find the spinning-
wheel silent and leaning against the wall with something of the
dejected air of a stringless cello . I could not see what was wrong
with it, but I felt that in some way its power of endurance had
been overtaxed. Nothing was said about it. Indeed after the
preliminary greetings almost nothing was said at all. The room
seemed unnaturally quiet, and the quietness had a kind of tension
about it.

For nearly an hour conversation fought a losing battle against
the clacking of three pairs of knitting-needles. For Grannie
Susan, who for some time had taken a surreptitious interest in my
comings and goings, had hobbled through from her part of the
cottage into the main room on the *wes' soyde,' where she now
sat hunched over her knitting while her eyes flitted from face to
face and her mouth occasionally twitched as if at some secret
amusement.

The younger children were out of sight. Emily and her
mother knitted intently. The room had an uncomfortable air of
waiting and the needles seemed to fly faster and faster. I longed
for the homely rumble of the spinning-wheel. At last the old
woman's voice croaked up: 'I knew 'at Hemly would be too
skeered to akse 'im. '

Knitting-needles fell defeated into laps and the girl's face
flooded with shame.

' What is it you were going to ask me, Emily?'

She sat very still for a moment, then took a deep breath — deep
enough to bring out in one long, prepared recitation: 'Would
you-all be so kind as to give me some cord to make a new rim for
my spinning-wheel?'

The last of that long, breath expired in a little sigh of relief as if
her part in an arduous affair had been completed.

THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE 87

'How much will you need?5 I asked.

With quiet casualness and but the smallest intake of breath she
replied: 'About two fathoms.'

From that moment barriers melted like ice-floes, the future
rippled ahead in a straight, blue channel and the knitting-needles
joggled with merriment.

'Now you'll have to knit 'irn a pair of Tristan sawks,' the old
•woman prodded. But Emily only smiled and lowered her head
demurely over the pair she was already knitting.

The little 'buddies/ Donald and Piers, came running home
from somewhere, full of prattle and curiosity. Angela peered
round a corner — she seemed to go through life doing it — to see if
the coast was clear. I could have told her that it was as clear as
her sister's complexion. But it would not have been in Angela's
nature to believe it if the coast itself had spoken and told her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Workaday Week

A NARROW shelf of land just above the reach of the surf; an
outlook restricted to the varied monotony of the sea ; a back-
ground composed of a miserable mountain that seems to have
a chronic cold in the head; such is the world of the Tristan
islander, to whom any intrusion from beyond the horizon is like a
visit from another planet.

Ask an islander what he does all day and he replies 'spadin' ' —
that is, digging his potato patch.

* And what do you do when you're not spading? *

*Oh, puttin' in' — potatoes, of course.

'But you don't do that all the year round?'

'No, some time we go fishinV

And that is as far as you get. Apart from that and an occasional
trip to one of the neighbouring uninhabited islands to collect
guano or penguins' eggs, or an excursion up the mountain or
round to another beach for drift-wood, there is 'nawthinV
Life is stripped to its bare bones, like the bleached ribs of dead
donkeys that we so often came across in the gulches.

88

THE WORKADAY WEEK 89

The younger generation of islanders were, as Bob Glass alleged,
much less enterprising than their ancestors. Sam Swain, the
oldest inhabitant, could recall the days when the island popu-
lation, numbering then less than a hundred, did a brisk barter in
poultry, potatoes, and other provisions with passing ships. An
export trade in cattle had been carried on with St Helena and even
with the Cape. But now Tristan had become a land of want.

Even if the whalers had not ceased to frequent the waters
around them, the islanders would not have had the provisions
with which to barter from the skippers the articles they required.
Where hardship had stimulated the original settlers, want and
neglect had stultified their descendants. Only a few cattle were
kept now as milking cows and, as old Bob had complained, the
housewives had given up making butter and cheese. Poultry
were scarce and the villagers were content with penguins' eggs or
the even less savoury petrels' eggs, fried in the birds' own oil, to
vary their monotonous diet of potatoes and fish. Only one or
two of the 'old hands/ such as Sam Swain and Henry Green,
still made the effort to raise a handful of green vegetables in their
cottage gardens. The only fruit was the apples which had been
planted long ago at Sandy Point on the eastern side of the island.
From these the islanders made a sour cider which they called
'Old Tom/ This was less potent than the black 'tea' they
brewed ; and even the tea plant no longer flourished.

Fortunately fish were still plentiful, and now that mild
weather had set in and the seas were calm the men and boys spent
many hours in their dinghies, tied up to a kelp-reef about half
a mile off shore. Often they would spend whole days in this
manner, lazily lopped on the tide, sometimes rowing out a couple
of miles in search of the larger blue-fish.

For the purposes of fishing, the islanders had developed some
skill in boat-building, making good use of their resources of
drift-wood and canvas acquired at rare intervals from ships.
With the exception of the ribs, which were made of apple-tree
wood from the plantation at Sandy Point, the entire frames of the
boats were made of drift-wood. Over the ribs were laid

90 ROCK OF EXILE

horizontal pieces called 'slabbies' and on these was nailed the
canvas, oiled and painted. The building of a boat took several
weeks, as the frame had to be left out in the open to weather and
to set into the requisite shape, to which it had been bent by the
use of cords. In its early stages, it looked like the skeleton of
some ancient Viking galley washed up on the strand.

The boats were of two sizes. The larger ones, of which the
biggest was about twenty-six feet, could be rigged for sailing, and
were used for the longer trips to the other islands of the group or
to the farther points of Tristan itself. The smaller ones, the
dinghies, were used for fishing and for collecting drift-wood from
the beaches around Big Point. The large boats had names, most
of them commemorating ships which had visited the island.
Chief's boat — that is, the one manned by Willy Repetto, his
brother Johnny, and several other * hands' — was the Canton;
Joe Repetto had his share with the Glass brothers in the British
Trader; old Gaeta's son, Robert Lavarello, was helmsman of the
Wild Rose; some of the Swains manned the Lorna, affectionately
termed the lonnie, others the Violet ; Johnny Green was coxswain
of the Morning Star, Arthur Repetto of Pincher. One boat was
named Doctor Christopher sen, after the leader of the Norwegian
scientific expedition that had visited Tristan, but those who found
the doctor's name unmanageable were content with the sobriquet
'Ticket.' Only one dinghy bore a name — that of Shackleton's
famous Quest, which had called at the island on its last voyage.

The names of the boats were painted either on the bows or on
the stern-boards in large but uncertainly formed letters, the name
Violet being misspelt *Voilet' — and pronounced 'Woilet/ All
the traditional names of boat parts were in use, having been
handed down from one generation to another: gunwale, strakes,
thwarts, stem-sheets, knees, rowlocks. The stern was always
the 'starn.'

When not in use, particularly during rough weather, the boats
were hauled up the steep rock slope from Little Beach by means
of an .old capstan erected on the cliff-top. There they were
stored in a sheltered hollow, which acted as a haven and in the

THE WORKADAY WEEK 91

banks of which were cut neat, rectangular recesses, each meant to
hold one boat. The boats were lashed in position by ropes
passed over their tops and secured beneath large boulders on the
ground. This somehow gave the impression of rows of stalled
oxen, comfortably sheltered from wind and weather. The
impression was strengthened by the inexplicable habit the islands
had of building a little barricade, two stones high, across the
mouth of each recess, as if to prevent the boats from breaking out
of their stalls. Altogether the boat-haven was a snug place,
shielded by its own banks from the wind above, cut off from any
view of the settlement and with the surf pounding the beach just
below.

At the inland end of the hollow huddled the decrepit structure
of an old boat-house, with cruel wind-rents in its thatch. Inside
this, on a floor littered with odds and ends of tackle, ropes,
blocks, derelict sea-chests, boxes of fish-hooks, tufts of sheep-
wool, rotting calfskin bags, all resembling so much animal
refuse, was kept — like an old bull that must be penned aloof from
the stalled cattle — a large wooden lifeboat that had been presented
by the captain of a visiting ship. It was rarely used by the
settlers, being found too * bull-headed ' and unmanageable. The
twisting 'island-tree' rafters, the sagging thatch, and barefaced
walls contributed a byre-like effect to the inside of the building.
Unconsciously one looked for a manger at the boat's head.

In the life of Tristan boats were of great importance. While
still young, the boys were allowed, encouraged, to go out alone
in the dinghies, fishing off the shore; and as soon as a youth
acquired strength and skill enough he took his place in a boat's
crew. Generally he bought, for potatoes, a share in the boat, so
that he could take part in the trips for eggs and guano. He had
then fulfilled his ambition to begin * work. * For the same reason
every young man of ambition had a dog and a donkey and hoped to
have a yoke of oxen.

The dogs were never treated as pets, though they had names —
names which like those of their masters were common to many
owners. * Knock' and ' Watch' were probably the commonest.

92 ROCK OF EXILE

There was only one 'Lancher': that belonged to Chief. Ken
Rogers had a * Bruno,' Wilson Glass had 'Dinty,' George Glass
had * Darby,' and several households included a hybrid species of
sheep-dog known, quite unironically, as ' Query. ' The donkeys
rarely had names beyond being classified as Somebody-or-other's
Jack or Jenny, and they were all so much the same mixture of
shaggy brown, black, and grey that we wondered how their
owners distinguished them. Cats were not plentiful — certainly
not as plentiful as rats. The few we saw seemed all to be elderly
tabbies known as Tibby. Though they lived more familiarly in
the houses, they were treated with no more obvious kindness ; on
the other hand, there was no conscious cruelty and we often
heard a mother's voice shrilling to her children the highly moral
precept: 'Don't cruelize the cat.'

Most of the children's games were imitations of the work of
their elders. The little girls played at housekeeping, though
without dolls: at an early age they learned to knit, to card, and
spin wool. The only toys I ever saw the boys playing with were
miniature hand-made models of the local ox-carts. The model
boats made by many of the young men were not intended as toys
but as souvenirs for trade with visiting ships. Yet the boys had a
happy time: they had cliffs to climb, surf to splash in, dinghies to
row, and donkeys on which to gallop out to our wireless hut on
Herald Point or down to the beach when the men were bringing
boat-loads of drift-wood from other sides of the island.

Wood was a precious commodity. It was needed for building
boats, cottages, bullock-carts, and gates and as fuel under the
cooking-pots. Firewood was often brought from the mountain,
where a species of low, spreading tree known only as 'island tree'
provided gnarled and twisted branches that burned well even
when green. Such branches were used also as the knees of boats.
Frequently a lone islander with a huge bundle of such sticks tied
to his shoulders could be seen descending with rapid goat-leaps the
steep mountainside.

At other times a dinghy would be pulled round the promontory
which in daily conversation loomed appropriately as the Big

THE WORKADAY WEEK 93

Point to a gap called Rookery Gulch, though the penguin rookery
which had occasioned the name had long disappeared.

Here drift-wood was washed ashore. It was a common occur-
rence to hear that So-and-so was 'down fa* wood,' which meant
that he had rowed round the Point: to go 'up fa* wood* meant, of
course, to climb the mountain. When the boat returned in the
afternoon, the boys would call out to one another: 'The dinghy is
hup! ' Donkeys, tethered in readiness near the cottages, would
be set off at a gallop for the beach, where their backs would be
piled high with wood, precariously lashed with rope. In the
event of an outsize boat-load, such as a large trunk from a distant
forest, a yoke of oxen would be put into service to haul the dinghy
up the beach, and the prize would be brought home by cart.

These carts were valued possessions, owned only by a few.
Even if a man had the bullocks, he might have to wait years for
suitable drift-wood to make wheels, axle, shaft, and even a small
body. The carts were often referred to as 'trains/ Once
Andrew Swain, or 'Doe' as he was called, the fiddler who played
for the dancing, was shown a picture of a railway train. He
looked bewildered at first, then laughed knowingly. ' 'At ain't a
train/ he declared. 'It ain't got no bullocks.'

The men — and the older boys — appeared always to have work
to do. In spite of the lack of enterprise in crop-growing, there
were many local occupations. During the day the men were
rarely seen near the cottages: they were 'spadin' ' or 'puttin' in'
or 'cleanin' grass' from their patches, or they were fishing or
boat-repairing — or they were 'up' or 'down' for wood. They
might even be manufacturing line with the spinning-jenny that
had been salvaged from the ill-fated Italia and the use of which

o

they had been taught by the late Andrea Repetto. Even on wet
days, when they could do little out of doors, the men had a task
awaiting them : with a jack-knife, a leather palm and needle, a roll
of twine and some squares of hide, the head of the house would sit
making moccasins for his family — and the earnest suitor would do
the same for his girl-friend.

94 ROCK OF EXILE

Such was the working week for the islander, while we tuned
transmitters and sent out strange messages to a world that he
hardly believed in, listened with bewildering intentness to faint
sounds in reply and occasionally scrubbed floors and recharged
batteries. His life appeared at least as purposeful to us as ours
did to him. It was a life with hardships and enjoyments and a
firm, if somewhat barren, ground for contentment. From his
acceptance of it emerged a calm fatalism that found expression in
a saying that we heard often on the lips of these villagers :

Go day, come day,
God bless Sunday.

In that crude couplet was the bare but adequate philosophy of
their lives.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Weekly Custom

ON SUNDAY the islanders did no work. Yet it was in some ways
the busiest day of all : the day of social intercourse. Its difference
from the rest of the week was marked by abstention from all
manual occupation, by the wearing of a different suit or dress (a
'best' one — not always a newer one) and by the substitution for
the usual daily routine of a weekly one equally unvaried in
pattern: in the 'mawnin" — 'charch' and 'wisitin"; in the
'hawf'noon' — 'wisitin" and 'co't'n"; in the 'hevenin" —
'charch,' 'wisitin',' and 'coVnV The last-named — courting —
was the solemn activity of the day: church-going was the enter-
tainment.

The little tin-roofed church had been filled every Sunday, since
the arrival of the chaplain, with a prim and sabbath-faced congre-
gation of islanders. It was possibly not the parson's fault that the
people gave the impression of slinking self-consciously, even
shamefacedly, into their seats when the bell rang — like school*
children facing the day's lessons. Inside, the men and women,
separated: the men in their most uncomfortable clothes,
clutching their caps, sat on one side of the aisle ; the women, with
their hands conscientiously crossed in their laps but itching for the
forbidden knitting-needles, sat on the other. From a pulpit that

95

96 ROCK OF EXILE

looked like a teacher's desk the minister delivered his lesson.
During the singing most of the mouths moved obediently enough
but little volume of sound issued. One or two people, such as
Mrs Repetto and her daughter, Mary Swain, stood in the front
row and sang in high-pitched, warbling voices that could be heard
above all the others: they were the * swots' of the class.

Enjoyment did not seem to be the keynote ; yet none of the
women at least would voluntarily have missed a service. Every
eye was noting meticulously the dress, expression, position, and
demeanour of every other member of the congregation. This
was the opportunity of storing the mind with those details that
would enliven gossip for a week to follow. This was the chance
of studying at close quarters, even if only out of the corner of an
eye, the exposed frailties of one's neighbours. This was the
occasion when the young men had time and freedom to stare at
the young women — and when the young women, from across the
aisle, were able surreptitiously to observe the men while seeming
to observe nothing.

The greatest delight of church-going came after the service,
when the released congregation assembled outside. Then the
tongues began to wag, the women preened themselves in their
best dresses, the young men strutted gawkily in their Sunday suits.
This was the weekly festival of flaunting one's children and
flouting one's neighbour. The scene was a patch of foot-worn
grass where the roads and paths converged and the cottages edged
away to leave an open space in front of the church. Here the
girls clustered in groups, laughing and chattering, displaying their
backs ; while the young men stood in a row against the wall of the
churchyard — almost sitting on it, but not quite, because of their
best trousers — and watched the backs of the girls. As the
congregation slowly dispersed, groups of relatives, who had seen
one another every day of the previous week, invited one another
home for tea and gossip. 'Wisitin" was actively practised for
the rest of the morning, as if people who worked side by side all
the week had their only real opportunity of meeting on Sundays.

Our own religious service, conducted by the same padre, was

THE WEEKLY CUSTOM 97

held at the station, which by now had — as all good naval establish-
ments have — its quarter-deck, with a mast and yard-arm for
flying the ensign, and its Sunday Divisions. Rig-of-the-day was
uniform — * Number Ones' — in place of the multiform array of
jerseys, sheepskin coats, and knitted caps that we wore on
week-days. The service ended just in time for us to hurry to the
store-roorn and draw our daily tot of rum — the only alcoholic
drink then allowed on the island. That ritual over, we followed
the local custom of Sunday morning visiting among the families
we knew.

These visits, like all 'public' occasions in the village, were staid
and formal affairs. On arriving at a cottage we found a roomful
of women in rustling skirts and men in ill-fitting Sunday best
sitting on boxes, side by side, around the walls, as if waiting
for the appearance of some public performer. The hostess was
always seated at the hearthside superintending the boiling of water
for the tea of hospitality. The appearance of any of our expedi-
tion was welcomed ; the woman of the house seized the oppor-
tunity of displaying her familiarity with us, of putting us on show
— as if we were the 'entertainers' whose arrival seemed to be
expected. Often, as we moved from one cottage to another in
leisurely progress, we found that the same group of 'spectators'
had hurried ahead of us to witness our next 'appearance/ We
didn't know whether to feel like celebrities or freaks.

The same repeated appearances were noticeable of the cups in
which tea was offered to us. Few of the housewives possessed
sufficient crockery to provide for more than two or three visitors ;
and the children were kept busy on Sunday mornings running
from cottage to cottage borrowing crocks — so that a guest often
found himself drinking from the same chipped mug as in the
previous house he had visited.

At these social assemblies I was frequently aware of a curious
feature of the islanders' conversation: when they addressed us, or
obviously intended us to be included in the talk, their speech —
once we had learnt the accent — was perfectly intelligible; but
when they exchanged remarks among themselves, not intended

98 ROCK OF EXILE

for our attention, they relapsed into a dialect that was incompre-
hensible. This was particularly noticeable when a child or young
girl from a neighbouring cottage came with a message or request:
over the half-door she would engage in dialogue with the mistress
of the house, who replied from the hearth in a shrill, raised voice,
sometimes in scolding tones and always in what seemed a foreign
language. Perhaps we were not intended to hear the substance
of these exchanges.

Another strange feature of these visits was the tacit under-
standing— almost a kind of telepathy — by which, even at a
moment when the conversation seemed to be at its liveliest, all
the visitors would suddenly, without any previous indication by
word or gesture, rise and leave. There was no exchange of
good-byes. In an instant, by some common impulse, everyone
stood up and quietly walked out. The hostess, completely un-
concerned, bent over her pots or poked the fire. That was
how visits by the islanders always ended.

On Sunday afternoons the centre of activity moved farther
afield. If the weather permitted — and it needed a hurricane or a
downpour to keep the island men indoors — the settlement was
empty while its inhabitants walked 'hout.' The cliff- top above
the beaches — the 'bank,' as it was called — became the local
boulevard, where village society paraded for its own inspection.
The husbands walked beside their wives as far as Herald Point,
where the abyss of Hottentot Gulch compelled them to reverse
their solemn promenade. The little girls looked picturesque in
their sun-bonnets, or 'kappies,' their sashes, billowing dresses,
and white stockings; the little boys looked pain-wracked as they
walked with their hands in empty 'best' pockets, forbidden even
to throw pebbles into the surf. The young men acknowledged
to be £ taken' walked stiffly beside their brides-to-be. Those
whose fate was still to be sealed dawdled in affected nonchalance
near a cluster of bright dresses. In a row along the bank, like
sea-gulls along a breakwater, sat the unengaged girls, passing
chatter to and fro like a bag of sweets, their impudent backs
turned on their would-be suitors. On an island where the

THE WEEKLY CUSTOM 99

number of eligible young men exceeded the number of marriage-
able young women, the latter could afford a feeling of security.
Their laughter had a note of care-free assurance missing from the
occasional guffaws of their admirers.

The Tristan girls mature young and courting begins at an early
age. Engagements, however, often have to be long, until the
future husband has enough wood to build a house and enough
sheep and cattle to support a family. There may be great rivalry
for the hand of a favourite girl, the most sought-after being
generally not the prettiest but the one whose father can offer the
biggest dowry.

During the week courting was conducted in the evenings. A
young man trying to win a girl would visit her home after his day's
work; he would walk straight into the house, where the whole
family was gathered round the open hearth ; he would find a seat
on a box and join in the conversation. Nobody would take much
notice of him, least of all the girl. If she was a coveted prize,
there might be several suitors sitting in the room side by side,
night after night, on the best of terms with one another. All of
them would bring presents — and as a rule all the presents would
be accepted, so that competition was maintained. When a girl
allowed a lover to make a pair of moccasins for her, she was
favouring him. When she knitted him, in return, a pair of socks
he could estimate his chances by the number of rings of 'marking*
wool round the tops: if there were four such 'marks* of affection,
he knew he was the favourite. Acceptance was signified when
she invited him to bring her his clothes to wash. After that they
would appear openly as an engaged couple, walking together on
Sunday afternoons . There was even a special part of the common
near the bank-top which was, by general understanding, reserved
for the engaged: others did not walk there on that day.

Naturally the presence of naval ratings on the island was of
great interest to the girls. At first they were distressingly shy,
and oddly enough it was with the young men that we first became
friends. If one of us approached the girls, they would rise like
birds from their perch, to settle again farther along the bank.

I 00 ROCK OF EXILE

Only after many Sundays did we win their confidence. The
younger ones were less diffident than their elder sisters. Tom-
boyish Marie was more easily addressed than her sister Asturias
Ann, one of the two prettiest — and plumpest — girls on the island.
Emily, the other favourite, still hid her vivacity in public behind
a provocative bashfulness. Ida looked saucy, but said nothing.
Isobel, conscious of a figure more slender than was common
among the village girls, practised aloofness for a while, studying
how to be graceful in retreat. Even after we knew them well,
the girls would display out of doors a shyness that they dropped
when visited at home.

The young men, so far from resenting any attentions we paid to
the girls, apparently welcomed them and eagerly forwarded our
advances. They seemed to take our interest as a compliment to
themselves and were prepared naively to follow our choices: if
we thought a girl attractive, they concluded she must be so.
We were careful, however, to keep clear of the ' engaged '
enclosure.

The greater part of Sunday afternoon was given to this serious
business of 'co't'nV It was early evening when the single
church-bell again loosed on the wind its tremulous call, like the
distant tinkle of a sheep-bell. Obediently the promenaders
turned like scattered sheep and converged on the church, the
bright dresses of the girls fluttering like banners to the fore.

After evensong a few of the elders read their Bibles for an hour
or less, not so much from devotion as to mark their superiority
over the greater number who couldn't read their Bibles. Most
of the women went to bed as soon as the evening meal was cleared
away, being at a loss what else to do when knitting was forbidden.
The men smoked for a while, then followed, seeking the simplest
excuse for removing clothes in which they could neither work nor
lounge at ease.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN,

The Lamp of Learning

CLOSELY associated with the church on Tristan was the school.
In the past the ministers had always instituted an elementary
education for the children. In the long periods when there was
no minister, this had been continued desultorily by the more
literate of the elders. Education was consequently uneven
among the villagers, the children of Agnes Rogers, Bob Glass,
and Mrs Repetto having been taught more than the others.

During our stay the school was revived under the direction of
the chaplain, and several of our party were enrolled as assistant
teachers. Lessons now took place in a vacant room at the
station; the old school-house behind the church, built as the
people would say 'in the time of Father Rogers,' had passed from
school-house to council chamber and dance-hall and finally into
disuse. The school brought us into close acquaintance with the
'lads of the willage/ especially the ten-to-fourteen-year-old ones,
who formed a homogeneous band which seemed rarely to split
into factions. The leading spirit was Edwin Glass, aged about
fourteen, known by nickname sometimes as 'Cabby,5 sometimes

101

I O 2 ROCK OF EXILE

as * Spike.' He was a merry-grinning, wiry, black-eyed boy,
just beginning to shoot in height, so that his white trousers, once
ankle-length, were now little more than knee-length and — being
worn, in imitation of ours, outside his socks — gave him a Huckle-
berry Finn appearance. Some visitor or missionary had given
him a diminutive, red and black quartered, school cap, which
seemed never to leave the back of his head.

His younger brother Joseph, about twelve years old, was as
tough and keen as a whip. There was a younger brother still,
Conrad, whom Joseph introduced to me:

'This 'yah's my buddy Conrad. Together, we is name'
awfter Joseph Conrad.'

I stared.

°At was a ship which call 'yah/ Joseph explained.

Others of this regular band were Basil Lavarello, insultingly
called *BawboonJ by the rest; Gilbert Lavarello, of blond,
Scandinavian colouring; Dennis Green, of freckled face, reddish
hair, and pale skin; Hubert Green, a tall, lugubrious boy known
either as * Nero ? or as 'Teachus, J and 'Barnett' Repetto, whose full
Christian names were Bernard Dominic Andrea. Followers, of a
slightly younger generation but equally ready to join in the wildest
escapades, were Emily's two brothers, Donald and Piers Hagan;
Benjy Green, aged six ; and a whole tribe of bare-legged urchins
with English, Italian, or Norwegian names — the last, such as
Lars and Soggnaes, commemorating the expedition of Norwegian
scientists to Tristan in 1937. The younger boys were small,
thin, and frail-looking, but the older ones were already developing
the tall, muscular bodies common among the men.

Associated with this juvenile brigade in mental rather than
chronological age was Tom Swain, familiar to station and settle-
ment as 'Sack.' At first meeting 'Sack3 had appeared to us a
particularly friendly and talkative youth, always ready to laugh
at a joke that he felt he ought to understand, full of half-comical
innuendoes, quick to copy our expressions and to pretend a know-
ledge of our affairs. It was some time before we realized that, in
spite of his youthful appearance and the villagers' treatment of

THE LAMP OF LEARNING 103

him as a 'lad,' he was actually a man of forty. He was not
exactly stupid: he was adept enough at boat-pulling, fishing, and
all the other island occupations ; but he had the mind of a boy,
and even his body was slight and under-developed by Tristan
standards.

The older youths, from fourteen upwards, considered them-
selves too nearly men to join in the excited, boastful argu-
mentative, scoffing conversations and the racing, pebble-
throwing, rock-climbing, surf- wading activities of the mere boys.
But they were eager to take advantage of the school and turned up
punctually with their newly issued pencils and writing-books.
Even Ken Rogers and his brothers, some of them married, Wilson
Glass, and other relatively educated young men came voluntarily
to add to their knowledge. Agnes in particular encouraged her
children to learn and Kenneth had a thirst for education. A few
of the girls, notably Ken's sisters, Asturias and Marie, shared this
desire, but most of the girls were content with illiteracy.
Although Chief announced, at the doctor's bidding, that school
was compulsory for girls as well as boys under the age of fourteen,
they did not attend regularly. Of those who came the motives
were questionable : the main desire was to see and be seen by the
teachers and to be the centre of a new kind of social gathering
from which parents and elderly female relatives were excluded.

Most of the children learned fairly quickly once they overcame
the initial shyness imposed by the strange classroom. They
studied elementary arithmetic and how to read and write. The
biggest obstacle was that the English they were being taught to
read and write was so different from the language they spoke.
It was easy enough to show how to write the letter *v' ; the
problem was to teach its purpose, since it was never used in local
speech. When it came at the beginning of a word the islanders
always pronounced it as a 'w/ as in 'winegar,' 'willage,' and
'Wictoria.* When it occurred in the middle of a word, they
turned it into a 'b/ as in 'hobber' for 'over.' Hlogically they
pretended that they could not render the *w' sound, otherwise so
popular, in the middle of 'flower' or 'flour/ which consequently

I 04 ROCK OF EXILE

became 'flobba/ Similar problems met us with the vowel sound
cer* and the consonant *th.' The Islanders said 'charch' for
'church,' 'Harbutt' for 'Herbert/ 'parple' for 'purple'; and
'barfday' for 'birthday/ 'Marfa' for 'Martha/ 'Roof for 'Ruth/
Lessons in spelling helped to correct some of these mistakes such
as the use of 'akse' for 'ask' and the promiscuous scattering of
ehV in words such as 'hanimals' and phrases such as * heating
heggs and happles. '

To correct local grammar wrould have been as difficult as it
would have been pointless. Some of the oddities gave added
vigour to the speech. Double and triple negatives were used to
pile up emphasis. Stranger to us was a curious kind of double
positive :

* Sometimes he allus go fishinV

'Look at those boys firing (throwing) pebbles. That they
allus do sometimes/

The auxiliary verb 'to do' was overworked, sometimes with
comical effect. It solved all problems of past tense. Not only
did we hear 'I done went/ 'I done finish my spiimin" ; we also
heard such dialogues as this :

' Wilson, is you done all you' wark?'

4 No, I ain't no done done no wark.'

In their everyday speech the islanders used many nautical
words. The men were always 'hands.' String was invariably
'line* and was measured In fathoms. The words 'left' and
'right* were redundant on Tristan. The points of the compass
were always in mind and the Islander spoke naturally of the north
or south wall of a room or even end of a table. To walk through
the village towards Big Beach was to 'take the heast'ard'; to
walk towards the Patches was to 'take the west'ard.*

At its best the local speech was vivid and vital. It lent itself to
Imagery. A person chilled by the cold was 'as blue as dimin' ;
a little boy who had eaten his fill was 'done round out like a
punkin' (pumpkin). To someone whose hair had been tousled
by the wind a girl might say: 'You' hair is all done root up.
You look like you bin haul' t'rough a bush backwa'ds. ' Perhaps

THE LAMP OF LEARNING I O £

the most colourful example was the description of wind-blown
waves as 'feather-white willies.'

The islanders were not without imagination. They had a
fondness for 'spinnin' yarns' and describing scenes. The girls
were attracted by reading: the boys had a stronger desire to write.
Sometimes in the evenings at David Hagan's house I would help
Emily with her 'laminV She could print a round, clear hand
fairly quickly and spell better than many, but had not the patience
to develop a cursive handwriting. At first this coaching was an
amusing game to her, an excuse for us to sit close together at the
table. The bird-oil lamp shone on her face as she bowed it
unnecessarily low over the paper; the soot from the lamp
blackened her nostrils ; her hand continually needed the guidance
of mine in forming its 'hays' and 'hesses.' But she tired quickly
of a game which required stillness and concentration without
feeding her imagination.

Reading, on the other hand, could hold her entranced for an
hour on end — which was a long time for Emily. It was a new
and satisfying experience. Simple stories of which an English
child has exhausted the charm at five years old could enthral her at
eighteen. 'Cinderella' held its glamour after several readings.
She was not interested in hearing it read aloud by someone else:
that was merely like listening to a yarn spun ; any of the islanders
could provide that. She had to read the story herself, her full
lips forming each word, as her forefinger traced its course, and
her voice becoming a rich, wonder-laden whisper as the story
emerged — sometimes so slowly — from the page. This was a
new magic we had brought into the lives of the young people.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A New Grave

I STILL paid regular visits, usually with 'Ginger/ to the home of
Bob Glass, where we delivered our 'washing' into the coarse but
capable hands of his wife Charlotte . We became familiar visitors
during the long evenings, when old Bob revealed more and more
astonishing facts about his life in many parts of the world.

From his seat of authority on the wooden sofa he would issue
orders in a quavering but peremptory tone to his wife :

*Put some more wood on 'at fire, Shawlutt. Set the pawt on,
woman, and make the gen'lmen a drink. '

Occasionally he would let his stick lie idle between his knees
while he condescended to stretch out his bony wrists to hold a
skein of wool for his wife to roll into a ball ready for knitting.
It seemed an incongruously domestic and familiar action.

His voice was soft and weak, with a curious lilt, a half-
American drawl. Age had mitigated in it some of the harsh
fullness of the island speech, subduing it to a melodious drone, in
which he meandered interminably. From time to time, while
talking, he would bring the gaze of his round, protruding eyes

1 06

A NEW GRAVE I 07

into line with one's face and hold it there, like the revealing but
unseeing beam of a ship's searchlight. The habit was discon-
certing, until one realized that he was looking beyond one at the
pictures in his memory — or at the mere vacancy of an old man's
dream. When he swung his stare away again, one could almost
see the beam of it whisked across the furniture of the room and
out through the window.

Of his thoughts, of his character, of what passed — if anything —
within his mind, we knew nothing. We could only make
guesses on the evidence of the stories he told of his own experi-
ence. Even these stories were never told directly: they seemed
to come up inevitably, in an ever-recurring rota, like the steps on
a mill-wheel. We could not honestly claim to hold conversa-
tions with Bob Glass, we merely 'listened in' while he ruminated
aloud.

By now we knew his history well. At the age of eighteen he
had left the island and gone to South Africa. There he had
worked at a candle factory in Cape Town. He had left it to join
the whaling schooner Swallow, of which his uncle was skipper.
From him he had gained his ' edication. ' He had made two trips,
the first as 'boatsteerer/ the second as third mate. Later he had
joined an American barque, the Wild Rose, on a sealing expedition
to Gough Island — the very ship that had called at Tristan and
taken away the wrecked shipmates of Gaetano Lavarello, the ship
after which the island long-boat was named. He had been to
England and several times to America. He had returned to the
Cape and had been working there at the time of what he inveter-
ately called the 'Bluebonnet' plague — as if it had been a particu-
larly vexing epidemic in feminine fashions. During the Boer
War he had served as one of Kitchener's Scouts. Afterwards he
had tried diamond-mining and farming in the Orange Free State
but had given them up to return at the age of thirty-four to
Tristan, bringing with him his Irish wife Elizabeth and five
children. After three years on Tristan and the birth of her
eighth child, Elizabeth had died and Bob had married the island-
born Charlotte — a daughter of Old Sam Swain.

108 ROCK OF EXILE

He had never again left the Island; and yet there had been
disillusion in his staying there. He had returned full of plans for
using the island boats as whale-boats and so enriching the settle-
ment with an industry in blubber oil. The chronicle of that
endeavour, as he had already told it to us, was both amusing and
pathetic. Perhaps it was this failure that had fixed his thoughts
so firmly in the past and away from his native island. His talk
was always of the 'houtside warl*/ especially of the South Africa
of his fighting days. He said once:

*Some folks don't loik wars. But when Oi was foighting the
Boers, 'at was the happiest toime of my loife! '

When asked if he would like to leave the island again, he
replied, gently, honestly, but with a resigned smile:

4Yaas, but it's too late now. I'se got too howld to go/

At the time when we listened to Bob Glass's ruminations, he
had acquired a certain wistful dignity. Yet there remained some-
thing elusive about him, even about the features of his face. I
believe he had a wispy, white moustache: but, even at the time of
knowing him, I was never quite sure. Apart from the staring
eyes and something about his stance that distinguished him from
the other village patriarchs, I always forgot what he looked like,
even in the interval of a few days. It was as if he were not quite
real, like a shadow or a silhouette. Every time that he greeted
us anew at the low doorway of his cottage, there had to be a
rapid process of identification and recognition: 'Ah yes, that's
Bob! 1*11 remember him now/ But I never did.

In the end I never had the chance to. During the week of his
seventieth birthday Bob Glass died.

Seventy years was not a long life by Tristan standards, but in
Bob's case it seemed to have been longer than usual. In the last
days of his illness he received visitors in the tiny bedroom which
was nothing more than a dark corner of the living-room shut off
by a wooden partition. Light entered it only through a small
opening cut high up in the partition. To the gloom of that box-
like compartment, where he lay somewhere on a wooden bunk,

A NEW GRAVE 109

my eyes never became accustomed, so that he seemed at the end
nothing but a voice, growing daily weaker, talking still of the past
and issuing out of obscurity. It was as if the old man had been
discarded and put away in a cupboard, where he still protested
feebly against his fate.

On the day of his funeral his coffin was carried all around the
settlement by a little cortege of villagers and finally buried in the
little cemetery where, not very long before, he had pointed out
to us his 'grandad's* grave and retold for the last time the pranks
of his boyhood, while the flax in the neighbouring patch had
rattled like dry bones in the blighting wind.

Now the flax, in all the gardens, was a dark fire of bloom.
Children playing near the graveyard pointed to a new turf mound
and some even called it 'grandad's' ; but there was no headstone
from which to prise the leaded letters for pellets — not even a
little wooden cross to steal and use as a sword.

On my first visit to Charlotte's — such it had become — I became
aware at once of change. Furniture had been rearranged and the
whole cottage had a fresh, rejuvenated appearance. So far from
the constraint of grief, there was a sense of release, a new,
unrestricted spontaneity. It seemed permissible now to raise
one's voice in that room where, in Bob Glass's company, con-
versation had always been conducted with incongruous formality.
Charlotte revealed, beneath her bovine inexpressiveness, an
unsuspected wry humour and a shrewd eye for the foibles of her
neighbours. Her snort of high-pitched laughter often startled
the walls of that cottage where old Bob had welcomed guests
with his unfailing, threadbare dignity.

The truth is that it was an undeniable relief to be free, in that
house, of his vaguely disturbing presence. Charlotte was a
creature at once more earthly and more earthy, with a local
wisdom closely related to the black, volcanic soil of the island.
She resembled in some ways a certain old she-goat that we had
heard about from the islanders : having caused damage to village
gardens and flax beds, the goat had been taken by several men in a

I I O ROCK OF EXILE

boat round the Bluff and put ashore on the beach called Anchor-
stock on the western side of the island. The next day men
working at their potato patches were amazed to see her returning
purposefully along the road to the village, scornfully ignoring the
stares of the men who had been responsible for her having to
climb — at her age! — the steep, trackless sides of the Bluff.

Charlotte had about her since her husband's death that same
purposeful and impenitent look as the old she-goat — which had
never again been banished from the settlement. Soon the
islanders came to regard her in the same light, as one for whom
exceptions had to be made — even to the extent of letting her
knock down the walls of propriety and wilfully uproot the
flowers of custom. Her widowhood had set her up in a position
of independence in the village such as Tristan women seldom
knew. Her life centred now, with possessive devotion, on her
docile son Wilson: him she ruled as despotically as her weak and
aged husband had ruled her, permitting him to raise his voice only
when addressing his old dog, 'Dinty.'

. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Holding the Fort

WHEN we had left Simonstown at the start of our exile, we had
been told that our stay on Tristan would be short — three to six
months. A more permanent staff, married men accompanied by
their wives, would be coming to relieve us. We had been
ordered to 'hold the fort' until their arrival. The phrase had
conjured up mental pictures of ourselves as the meagre garrison
of a beleaguered outpost. Instead we found ourselves in the
most peaceful of backwaters, unstirred by the tide of war.
Except for radio broadcasts we should have known nothing about
the world struggle that was the occasion for our presence on the
island. It was as if we had been dropped out of the conflict, lost
or forgotten. And yet, if one *side' had mislaid us, there was
always the possibility that the other would find us. An enemy
submarine might surface in view of the settlement and send a
landing-party to investigate.

The thought did not occur to us often, but the contingency had
to be considered. The station consisted of low wooden
buildings, masked to some extent from the sea. At night the

in

I I 2 ROCK OF EXILE

windows were blacked out. The faint glimmers of light from
the cottage lamps were almost invisible. But in the day-time
there were the aerial masts and the ensign to proclaim the
outpost. Our entire armament was a few machine-guns and
revolvers and enough rifles to equip the station personnel and
some of the able-bodied islanders.

Occasionally an * alarm5 was practised. Arms were issued,
the islanders * evacuated* to the upper reach of Hottentot Gulch
and certain of the radio staff disappeared to an 'emergency'
station hidden among hill slopes. The whole practice was
enjoyed as a kind of game and the excited hubbub of voices from
the gulch echoed all over the settlement shelf. A number of the
island men were organized into a local militia — the Tristan
Defence Volunteers. They were taught to handle rifles. Some-
times a competition * shoot' was held between the Navy and the
T.D.V. : such an event was a local sports day. The only use of a
revolver was by the operator on duty at the hut on Herald Point:
during a slow afternoon watch he would sometimes relieve the
tedium by shooting at flies on the wall or through the open door
hatch at a can on the fence outside.

Life at the station was a quiet, monotonous routine. We slept
in one wooden building, we ate in another. The doctor and the
padre lived on the other side of the grass rectangle of * quarter-
deck/ The store-keeper spent his days in a dark interior of his
own; Bill the cook built himself a bakery adjoining the galley, to
enlarge his domain; Jock the stoker lived with oil-cans and cotton
waste in the engine-room, from which came the power to operate
the transmitters and receivers and to supply light to the station;
the 'met/ staff cultivated mysteries in their own sanctum; and in
the wireless-telegraphy room the operators tapped morse keys
and turned dials.

Since the departure of the soldiers there had been a few other
changes in personnel. The store-keeper and the leading tele-
graphist, who had come with the advance-party, had been
relieved. We had some extra N.C.O.s, a second cook, and six
more operators. The circle round the mess-table had become

HOLDING THE FORT IIJ

slightly bigger, but the core of the original draft remained, and
the newcomers could not be strangers for long in so limited a
company.

By its nature our work cut us off from the islanders. Through
the language of telegraphy we communicated with operators in
distant shore stations and occasionally in ships. We were in
regular touch with Simonstown, and at the end of an official
* routine' transmission we were allowed — by a special concession
made to us in consideration of the loneliness of our position — to
hold private conversation, in morse, with the telegraphists there.
We came to know their names and to have a vicarious familiarity
with them 'over the air.' We even learned to recognize the
distinctive morse hands of several of them, so that from the speed
and rhythm of a signal we could say; 'So-and-so's on to-night.'
It is amazing how personal an instrument a morse key can become
to the ear of an intent listener: it can transmit friendliness, cold-
ness, sarcasm, exasperation, or ribald amusement. This 'tone'
was quite independent of the subject-matter of messages, since all
our traffic was in code.

Radio was our link with the outer world. It even brought us a
sort of remote-controlled acquaintance with the 'sparkers' on
other islands in the South Atlantic. When the time came to
make a routine call to Simonstown, there would be a friendly
rivalry between us and the operators on St Helena and the Falk-
land Islands to establish communication first. Our call signs
had the familiarity of nicknames. Sometimes it seemed that we
had a closer relation with those unseen fellow key-tappers than
with our hosts on the island.

In addition to the main wireless-telegraphy office there was the
receiving hut on the Point. It was just big enough to house an
operator's bench with its equipment, a chair for the operator on
duty, and a bunk for the keeper of the middle watch, who would
take over at midnight. This tiny structure had become a kind of
masthead position, a crow's nest from which to survey the daily
round of activity on the island, the passage of the seasons, and the
infinite variations of the sea. * Hold the fort, ' we had been told ;

I 14 ROCK OF EXILE

and at first sight, the hut, standing aloof from the main buildings
of the station, a square, wooden box with a window in each wall,
raised on short stilts so that its floor was clear of the ground, sur-
rounded by a stockade to keep marauding animals away from the
aerial bases, had actually had the air of a little fortress. At least
it w^as a kind of refuge. Those of us who worked in it had a
feeling of ownership: of all the buildings on the island this one
was most peculiarly our own. To it we could withdraw from too
close a proximity with our fellows at the station or from too
pressing a familiarity of friends in the village. Its smallness made
it inevitably private; and curiously enough, in that closed com-
pany of people on that isolated island, there were times when
privacy seemed a rare and desirable thing.

Among the islanders 'the hut on the Point' was always an
object of curiosity. Its purpose they accepted, without compre-
hension but without question. When told that messages from
far away were * caught' by the wires above and carried down to
the operator's 'listening box,' wilich enabled him to hear and
•understand them, they merely smiled, glancing up at the wires.
They were too polite to contradict or laugh outright. They
chose rather to accept the hut as a convenient social pivot. Its
situation, separate from the rest of the station and sufficiently far
from the village, gave it that value. They would not have visited
our mess or the engine-room or the transmitting-room, except on
a definite errand. But the Point was just a comfortable distance
for a walk, and there was the reassurance that only one or at the
most two of us would be there.

On Sunday afternoons especially the hut became a focus.
Couples and families strolled past and leered in through the door
at the telegraphist on watch. Sometimes they stepped inside to
pass the time of day, and sat uncomfortably for a few minutes on
the bunk, accepting a fill of tobacco or a cup of tea: it fascinated
them to watch the electric kettle boil. The 'gals' always chose
a portion of the cliff-top immediately in front of the hut for
their Sunday afternoon perch, while the young men of the
village dawdled in their vicinity. The Point was also the most

HOLDING THE FORT I I 5*

convenient place from which to watch the boats returning from
Nightingale or Inaccessible ; and so it became the scene for the
local rodeo, when the boys rode out on their donkeys to watch
the progress of the boats and amused themselves by galloping
round and round the hut.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Work in the Sun

THE SUMMER days followed one another with busy haste, per-
spiring gently. The men had many seasonal tasks to finish before
the winter winds set in again. The fishing dinghies had to be put
in order: sails had to be stitched and the boats painted and
repaired, even new ones built. Some men climbed the moun-
tainside to catch young s mollies/ which, cooked in their own fat,
were a favourite delicacy. Others were reboarding their houses
against winter draughts and making new spinning-wheels for their
womenfolk. The women themselves were making new dresses
for Easter, and all of them were cleaning their homes in readiness
for the holiday at that season, which would last a week and during
which all work would be forbidden.

Even Paddy Rogers, who was by nature far from industrious
and who had been content for two years to live, with his wife and
two children, in a portion of his father's cottage, at last began
work — aided by other * hands' — on a house of his own. In the
early stages of construction it looked just like another sheep-pen,
and it seemed a long time before that resemblance began to be
modified.

116

BOAT-BUILDING

BOAT PAINTING
(Willy Lavarello)

READY FOR LAUNCHING

MARIE, AN ISLAND GIRL

Marie knits as she rides, carrying a hoe and using her feet to urge the donkey.
Beyond hillpiece in the background lie the Potato Patches. The 'road' passes
between hillpiece and mountain on the left. The cliffs on the right fall to

the sea.

THE PATCHES

on the left the mountain, on the right and in the distance the sea. Beyond
the first group of patches lies Big Sandy Gulch.

.v - •c££^^
foi^^

w^.

2. Women 'puttin' in' at the Patches.

DONKEYS ARE RIDDEN BY MEN, WOMEN,
AND CHILDREN

They are used for carrying loads but not for drawing carts. The rope halter
about the neck is the only harness used.

A ROCKHOPPER PENGUIN, OR 'PINNAMIN'

From the black and yellow head ' tossels * the islanders make

decor ative table mats.

WORK IN THE SUN 1IJ

Chrissy Swain also chad hands in/ to assist him in renewing the
roof of his cottage, damaged by last winter's weather. First,
new * principals' and rafters were inserted, then the roof was
rethatched fore and aft with sheaves of tussock-grass.

It was customary for an islander, when faced with any major
undertaking such as this, to 'call5 as many of his friends and
neighbours as he needed to help him. In payment for their
services they would be fed at his table until the work was
finished. Sometimes on the last evening, when the job was
completed, a special banquet would be provided for them, at
which a huge pumpkin pie would supplement the usual roast
potatoes and potato-cakes.

Naturally the * hands' were quicker to answer the call of a
neighbour who saw to it that they were well fed in his employ.
Work on Paddy's house proceeded slowly: Chrissy 's roof was
soon finished. At first the sheaves and the newly cut sods of
turf with which the ridge at the top was sealed had a raw, green
appearance among the silvery thatch of the neighbouring cot*
tages ; but a few weeks of sunshine bleached them to the uniform
drab shade. Paddy's house, on the other hand, still looked like a
sheep-pen without a gate when, with the rest of the community,
he was required to take part in the main annual event, the potato
harvest.

At this important time it was usual for the men to spend the
whole day at the Potato Patches. They would vie with one
another in rising at an absurdly early hour, many sleeping in their
clothes so that they were ready at the first thinning of darkness
to get up, saddle their waiting donkeys, and arrive at the scene
of the day's activity well before daylight. There they would
have to wait an hour or more in the chilly dawn, sitting on
boulders, smoking their pipes on empty stomachs, until it was
light enough for them to start work. The islander who did
not arrive at the Patches until daybreak was loudly chaffed as a
lie-abed and asked if he had found one of 'them young gals' to
sleep with.

Even the women laid aside their knitting to join in the great

I I 8 ROCK OF EXILE

task of lifting the potatoes. About midday they could be seen
going along the road to the Patches, some riding donkeys, on
which thev perched side-saddle with babies in their arms, tins of
baked potatoes and pots of tea slung across the animals* necks.
A long train of children and dogs walked behind. In our off-
watch periods we could not refrain from following.

The road was a rocky one that dipped steeply down into two
gulches and wound round many large boulders on its way to the
end of the plateau, where the Patches were situated. At the far
side of the second gulch — known, but without known reason, as
Knock Follv Gulch — the road was barred by two walls of stone
supporting a gate made from crooked branches of 'island tree.*
This flimsv barricade, helped by the natural barrier of the gulch,
kept the islanders' cattle and sheep either ' blocked out' or
4 blocked home/ as the wish might be.

Beyond the gate the road passed through a high, green pass
between the mountainside and two outlying cones called Hill-
piece and Burnt Hill. This pass was known as the Valley — or,
in local parlance, the 'Walley.' Here grazed the 'tame* cattle
and the bullocks and donkeys not in service. The 'wild3 cattle
were kept on another part of the island. The road was littered
with dung, and in the warm hours the heady smell of cattle's
breath hung in the air. The sheep kept to the higher slopes,
terraced with their narrow foot-tracks: their cries carried plain-
tively from the distance.

The Valley gave access to a plain, about half a mile wide and a
mile long, lying between the mountain and the sea. It was really
jest an extension of the grassy ledge on which the settlement
stood. Here the island men cultivated their potatoes in small
* patches' or fields, each of which was private property and
marked out as such by a low wall of stones. Even some adjacent
patches had their separate walls, with a two-foot lane of grass
between, to avoid the troublesome issue of party walls. Grazing
land was held in common, but when any man enclosed a portion
it became his so long as he cultivated it and kept the wall in
repair. If it was allowed to fall into disuse or disrepair it

WORK IN THE SUN 11$

reverted to the community. About property rights the Islanders
were almost fierce ; and a family that neglected to till and tend its
patches would be allowed to starve in consequence or made to
pay a high price in material possessions for the potatoes it needed
from its neighbours.

The crop was never a really good one, since the men never
changed the seed and rarely changed the ground. At one time
they had been in the habit of using seaweed as manure, but had
found that its constant use hardened the soil; now they used
guano and sheep dung which they obtained by the simple, callous
practice of penning the sheep for days on end in the tiny paddocks
or kraals about the village.

During the harvest season the Patches became a scene of much
animation. As soon as the women arrived there, they would
prepare a midday meal — most of the men having had no break-
fast— and then remain for the rest of the day to help with the
gathering of the potatoes that had been dug. To a visitor arriving
on the scene in the afternoon it appeared that the whole popula-
tion, men, women, children, dogs, and donkeys, had migrated
to this plain.

At one's approach a mongrel sheep-dog would leap up on to
a wall, ears erect and body quivering with alertness, to bark
ferociously; with equal suddenness it would lose interest and
jump down to continue snuffling in the field comers, thrusting its
nose into the interstices of the stones and snorting impotently at
the huge rats that unconcernedly kept house within the loose-
piled walls.

In a grass lane between two patches an ox-cart rested, as if in
ironic comment on so much activity of men and dogs, its single
long shaft like a crutch for its old bones, its solid, rough-hewn
wheels buried to the axle in grass, looking as if it had found its
last resting-place, where decay would come to it slowly with the
passage of the seasons. Yet, at the end of the day, the cart, laden
with the harvest, would be lurching homeward.

Near by, a pair of oxen, unhitched from the cart but still
imprisoned by the heavy wooden yoke to prevent them from

I 20 ROCK OF EXILE

straying, stood patiently, occasionally lowering their heads to-
gether, in their creaking collar, to munch the grass.

The men dug and the women and children collected and stored
in bags until evening. The light was fading before the family
processions began to make their way, like caravans of tired
pilgrims, back along the road to the village. Where there was
only one donkey to a family, it wras ridden by the man, sitting
well back on the animal's haunches in a clumsy saddle made of
wood, straw, and canvas, his long legs dangling on either side, his
feet in the dust, so that sometimes he appeared to be walking.

The slow-stepping bullocks, guided from in front by boys with
long whips, drew the carts. Where the road dipped down into
the gulch they would tense their forelegs, lowering their hind
quarters for a half-slithering descent, restrained by the long-
drawn cries of the teamsters — £ Yo-ho-ho-o-oh, now! ' Then, as
the whip cut cruelly across their noses, they would throw their
massive shoulders forward in the yoke, heads lowered, straining
up the other side of the gulch.

Strung out behind were the women and children, carrying
tools and utensils and accompanied by the inevitable train of dogs.

This harvest lasted several weeks and was the climax of the
year's work. While we were on the island the Village Council
reported that the year's crop had been about four thousand five
hundred bushels. Even while the last potatoes were being dug,
many of the men were busy * cleaning grass' from their patches to
prepare them for next year's sowing. But before the summer
ended there was to be another and very different harvest.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Love in the Shade

ONCE A YEAR, in March, took place an event that was a kind of
holiday outing for the people of Tristan: this was the trip to
Sandy Point, on the south-eastern side of the island, to pick the
apples in the orchards there. It was the only regular occasion on
which the women and girls accompanied the men in the boats.
This year they were accompanied too by most of the naval
party.

The journey was about twelve miles by sea. I occupied my
now customary place in the Wild Rose. Robert Lavarello was
again at the tiller and David Hagan pulling the bow oar. Emily
crouched in the stem-sheets, among a cluster of other girls with
men's coats thrown over their heads and shoulders to shield them
from the spray. The whole party was in a holiday mood. We
steered close in and I had my first view at close quarters of the
rugged mountain walls of the east coast, which had been our
first glimpse of the island six months previously. As we rounded
Big Point, where the settlement plateau came to an end, the
rollers roared hoarsely as they were ripped apart by the rocks.

121

I 2 2 ROCK OF EXILE

High above the surf was visible the appropriately named Ugly
Road, by which the island men sometimes made their way on foot,
when the wind permitted, round the Point to the eastern beaches
for drift-wTood. On this day a dog which had followed us from
the village passed carefully along the narrow ledge, looking like an
insect crawling on the face of the wall. Making its way down to
the beach, it ran barking joyfully at the boats, sometimes driven
into the surf by the bulging rock-face behind the beach. High
up on the cliffs we could see the white 'mollies' sitting in green
niches.

The wind wras head-on to us and the men had a hard pull.
For a part of the journey I relieved John the Baptist at his oar;
before long my hands were bleeding on the handle. Just before
we reached Sandy Point, Chief called a halt and the boats were
tied up to a kelp-reef while the men entered into a long consul-
tation across the wrater about the prospects of a landing. The
general opinion was that the surf would be too heavy to allow the
boats to be run ashore in safety unless the women were landed at
some earlier point. So, at a place where the narrow black beach
opened out into a great gash in the mountainside, known as Big
Gulch, all the women and girls were set ashore. They had not
far to travel. The boats were pulled slowly ahead and the women
scrambled over the rocks, some carrying children. It was then
that we heard a deep, growling rumble from the mountain and
looked up to see massive boulders bounding down the slope
directly above the women. The oarsmen stopped pulling, all the
men stood up in the boats and began shouting conflicting advice:
4 Run back!' 'Run forward!' Their panic was oddly like ex-
citement, as if they were urging on contestants in a race. For
what seemed an interminable pause the women crouched still in
fear and uncertainty. At last they stumbled back on their
tracks just as the boulders thundered to the beach ; only the little
dog which had run barking all the way from the settlement was
killed. The men resumed their seats quietly and took up rowing
again. With the dispassionateness of a guide giving information
David Hagan leaned over my shoulder and observed that such

LOVE IN THE SHADE 1*3

'falls' were common at the end of summer, when the early rains
loosened the soil on the mountainside. With my hands still
trembling on the oar handle, 1 hated David for several minutes.

As soon as the boats grounded on the pebbles at Sandy Point,
the men leapt out and ran back along the beach to meet the
women and children — not to express their concern, but to
congratulate them on their performance in dodging the rocks.
The whole party returned like a triumphal procession to the
landing-place. For several minutes everyone talked at once and
there was a great deal of excited, high-pitched laughter. As the
various family groups split up to prepare their separate lunches,
the voices of the women, especially the older ones, could be heard
retelling again and again how they had felt and how they had
acted as soon as they heard the 'fall.5 The story would be
repeated many times, with proud embellishments, at hearthsides
during the coming winter.

After lunch, when the excitement had subsided, Chief led the
way by a steep path that zigzagged up the cliff-face to a low
plateau, about a hundred and fifty feet above the sea. Here lay
the * orchards' — a jungle of low, spreading trees, almost unrecog-
nizable as apple-trees. Their branches formed a wild tangle
amid the long tussock-grass, both on the level plateau and in the
hollow of a shallow gulch. There were also a few peach-trees
that had been planted by the early settlers, but the peaches were
not ripe ; and one wall of the gulch was completely covered by a
roving mass of grape-vine — but there were no grapes.

Among the trees it was impossible for the groups to remain
intact. Each person took a small box, bag, or other receptacle
and struck out on his own into the jungle. The trees had been
planted close together and kept low by the winds with the result
that their branches had become so densely intertwined that it was
impossible to see a person picking in the tree next to one's own.
There was no need for ladders and very little climbing was neces-
sary. Soon the whole party was scattered over the plain,
invisible among the trees but perceptible by occasional rustlings
among the leaves and voices calling. At rare intervals, moving

I 24 ROCK OF EXILE

from tree to tree, one came on little family groups of harvesters.
The girls were putting the apples they gathered into the bosoms
of their dresses, returning only occasionally to the nearest box or
hamper to disgorge them. They looked grotesque, even gross
figures, with great sagging bosoms.

Under the trees the long tussock-grass formed a dim, green-lit
undergrowth, in which the children rustled joyously. Carrying
my half-filled box from one part of the jungle to another, I came
upon Emily Hagan, the skirt of her outer dress held out in front
of her and overflowing with apples, for which she was in search of
a receptacle. There were just enough to fill the box I was
carrying. She smiled gratefiilly as I set it down before her; but
she released the apples too quickly from her dress, so that more
tumbled in the grass than into the box. This did not seem to
trouble her. She stooped quickly and picked up two from near
her feet, then stood idly by while, on my knees, I set about
retrieving the others . She showed none of the agitation that had
embarrassed her on the occasion when I interrupted her spinning
in the yard or on subsequent evenings at her home. Perhaps it
was because there was no one near to observe us: we seemed to be
alone in this part of the orchard. Looking up, I asked:

* Why don't you carry the apples the way the other girls do?'
She fixed me with her dark-eyed stare, but said nothing. I

wondered if, after all, she was still timid. She looked away, and
one hand plucked at the leaves on a branch. My attention had
returned to the apples on the ground and I thought she did not
mean to reply, when — as if in answer — she asked a counter-
question:

* Is you want me to make myself look hugly like 'at? '

After a moment of surprise, I assured her that I wished no such
thing and could never imagine her looking so. She regarded me
again with that solemn stare which was at once bold and shy.
She appeared to be weighing the import of this last remark. I
believe she did not understand compliments. But after a while
she seemed to reach the conclusion that some acknowledgment
was required. As I rose from arranging the last of the spilt

LOVE IN THE SHADE I 2 $

apples at the top of the box, her hand darted among the leaves
above her and she asked:

'Is yon wan' a happle to eat? This one is sweet/

She held it out to me on her palm. With just such a gesture — §
and perhaps the same shy half-smile — had Eve occasioned the fall
of Man.

I took the hand which held the apple and led its owner away
among the trees. She accepted the action placidly, with no
attempt to draw back. There was no sound of any other har-
vester near us: we might have been isolated, two dream-figures
in a strange underworld of grass-clumps and tree-trunks. Emily's
body was softer, her lips were sweeter than the ripest apple.

By late afternoon the harvest was complete. Singly and in
groups the apple-pickers emerged from the tangle of trees, laden
with boxes and bags of fruit. On the beach computations were
made of the amount picked. All the islanders were in a lively
mood, as if at the end of a picnic-outing. There was much banter
as the boats were loaded. I had been unable to find again the box
of apples I had left among the trees ; Emily was accused of having
loitered all the afternoon, without doing any work. No one
was inclined to spoil a scandalous joke by going back to look for
the box.

The sea was calmer as we pulled away from Sandy Point, The
wind was with us, and after rowing for a short distance we stopped
to hoist sail. The steady knock of oars in the rowlocks and the
rhythmic sluicing of blades through the water gave place to a
silence broken only by a gentle lapping, while the long-boat
rocked, uncontrolled. Then, as the sail filled, there was a
pregnant poise and a glide forward. Instead of the regular lift
and drive of the boat, there was a new onward-surging movement.
The regular chock of oars had been succeeded by the slow thump
of the boom across the gunwale and the gentle creak of the mast.
To this soothing accompaniment we returned home.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Fireside Topics

I PROMISED myself that before I left Tristan I would visit every
home in the village and know every family. My express purpose
was to compile a complete record of the names of adults and
children in each household. In time I completed the census,
adding even the names of many of the dogs and of the only three
donkeys which seemed to have names: Charlotte's 'Nancy';
George Glass's * Black Farr,' and Emily's 'Black Tippy' — a name
to which she indignantly objected, suspecting that it alluded as
much to her own dark mane as to the donkey's.

By the time my list was complete, I had sat at every hearthside,
drunk a cup of * strong drink, ' and been greeted familiarly in every
cottage on the island. I had even mastered the problem of
differentiating by name all the islanders. This was not easy.
Since there were only seven family names, and since the number of
Christian names was also restricted, it was not unusual for two
people to have the same combination of names. The villagers
solved this problem by prefixing the title 'Big' or 'Little' to the
name of each. This title indicated seniority, not size. We had

126

FIRESIDE TOPICS I2y

met Big Sam Swain, who because of his exceptional seniority was
often dignified with the more venerable prefix 'Old' ; and we had
learnt to distinguish him from Little Sam Swain, a mere stripling
of sixty-eight. In the same way we had come to know Big
Gordon Glass — a slender, sensitive-looking man of middle height
and middle age — from Little Gordon Glass — a rumbling-voiced
giant, well over six feet of muscle but many years junior to his
'big' namesake. We likewise distinguished Big Mabel from
Little Mabel and Big Maggie from Little Maggie. Surnames,
especially in reference to the women — always with the exception
of Mrs Repetto — were hardly ever used.

Another method of distinction was to couple the names of
husband and wife: thus we heard allusions to Margaret's Johnny
(Johnny Repetto), Sophie's Johnny (Johnny Green), and 'Ria's
Johnny (John Baptiste Lavarello — whose wife's full name was
'Maria,' always pronounced with a long, anglicized 'i'); and
conversely, there were Willy's Violet (Lavarello), Chrissy's
Violet (Swain), Robert's Mabel (Lavarello), and Little Gordon's
Mabel (Glass).

It had taken us many months to fit the correct name to each
face — the faces seeming sometimes to be as much alike as the
names. Even now we occasionally met people, women in
particular, whom we were sure of having never seen before. It
was as if the settlement carried a mysterious second population of
stowaways who were gradually coming to light. If I had not
made a point of introducing myself into every cottage, I am sure
there would have been inmates of that tiny village whom I should
never have met, however long our stay there.

One fact I learned from these visits was the marked difference
between the best homes and the poorest. Some of the cottages,
the oldest ones, were of well-trimmed stones, complete with
lofts and lined throughout with wood. These had been built
when the skill in stone-masonry of the first settlers and good
supplies of drift-wood and timber from wrecked sailing ships
were available. The later ones — built since wrecks had become
few and drift-wood scarce — had no lofts and very little woodwork.

128 ROCK OF EXILE

The rafters and thatch were visible inside; and when a strong
wind tore the tussock loose the occupants were exposed to
the weather. Some cottages had bare earthen floors ; the walls
were impanelled or only half-panelled — with packing-case wood.
In most, however, there had been some attempt at making the
interior home-like; shelves and mantelpieces were lined with
paper cut into ornamental shapes; and bare stone walls were
pasted over with old newspaper — of which the islanders always
spoke grandly as 'wall-paper/ as if that had been its primary
purpose.

Some families were very 'poor' — that is, they possessed few
cattle, sheep, or oxen, sometimes none. In one or two instances
this poverty was due to laziness and improvidence. There were
some men who would never plant enough potatoes to supply their
families through the winter and who were reduced to selling such
live-stock as they had not slaughtered and even bartering the
boards from their houses for potatoes, until their possessions had
all passed to their neighbours. In these homes the children had
to be fed almost entirely on fish: they were pale, thin, and under-
sized beside the other children.

In such a small, self-contained society we might have expected
some system of communal sharing and assistance. There was no
such practice ; and Mrs Repetto, whose influence in all matters of
village 'policy* was preponderant, hotly denounced any tendency
of this kind. She declared that it only encouraged greater
laziness among the already idle. The islanders were essentially
individualists, with a strong sense of property rights and no
feeling of responsibility for the weaker members of the com-
munity or for the neglected children. In this matter the doctor
brought authority to bear. At his instructions, some of the
under-nourished children were 'boarded out' and the families
which fed them received credit chits to spend at the store. He
had also organized the island men into work-parties and paid
them, by chit, to do various jobs of construction and improvement
at the station. Now that this work was finished, the work-
parties were employed on useful tasks in the village — such as the

FIRESIDE TOPICS I 29

installation in all cottages of an improved style of septic lavatory,
designed by the doctor, in place of the insanitary board-and-
bucket system, with which the islanders had been accustomed to
pollute the 'watrons' from which they drew their own drinking
and washing water. The men were also working together in
preparing material for the building of a new schoolhouse and
village hall. For all such employment they still expected to be
paid 'by the doctor/ on the grounds that they were not working
* for themselves . ' The notion of working for the community was
beyond them.

If neighbourly feeling, however, was lacking, public opinion
certainly was not. Concern for what the neighbours would say
dominated every islander's conduct. That anxiety was the
police force which had prevented any serious crime in the whole
history of the settlement. Gossip was rife: it was the chief
activity of the women; but so pervasive was the desire for
respectability that scandal rarely had a chance. In morality and
in religion the islanders placed all their emphasis on behaviour.
The word of God was the word of the padre, and too often that
was beyond their comprehension. Consequently the ritual
took precedence over the meaning; church-going was more
important than belief. Although not subtle enough to be
hypocrites, the villagers were shrewd in their morality: they
rated discretion as the highest virtue; and in a hamlet where
almost all conduct was 'public,' discretion was always needed.
As Emily often complained, * nobody can't look at anybody
without somebody knows/ She might show herself a creature
of warm impulse inside her father's house; but she would not
openly walk five yards in my company outside, and was reluctant
even to stop and speak if I met her in the village: 'somebody*
would see, she said, then 'everybody' would talk.

Tristan society was by no means the single unit that we had
at first assumed it to be. The villagers were definitely class
conscious; certain families were considered superior to others.
There was one snobbery that was pronounced. The islanders
were sensitive about the coloured stock that had been included

1 3° ROCK OF EXILE

among the original settlers, and they viewed with distaste any
surviving evidence of this strain. Consequently those born with
fair hair and blue eyes looked down on those with dark hair and
brown eyes, and regarded with contempt certain people whose
skin showed a definite swarthiness. The same contempt did not
extend to those who wrere illegitimate — and there were two or
three such. Loose behaviour was tabooed, but the occasional
introduction of new blood by visitors to the settlement, especially
fair-haired ones, had in the past been tacitly overlooked —
provided always that the external proprieties of conduct had been
preserved. Discretion, as always, was the touchstone.

In general outlook the people of Tristan were materialists, and
there was little room in their lives for the spiritual or the
imaginative. But they had one or two beliefs of a fanciful nature.
Several islanders, for instance, were credited with the power of
seeing * visions' of incidents, usually disastrous ones, before they
happened. Unfortunately, during our stay, we never received
report of any such experience in time to test it by events : we
were told of the vision only after its fulfilment. Young Louie
Swain, our canteen assistant, was said to hear voices in the air and
thunder in the earth beneath his feet when some unusual hap-
pening was imminent ; sometimes too he dreamed about dogs on
the church roof and this wras a particularly dire omen. The
islanders were also inclined to attach some psychic significance
to the fainting fits common among the adolescent girls.

There were many minor superstitions among the villagers.
We often heard allusions to Jack o' Lantern, the spirit once
commonly believed in by sailors. He was said to be responsible
for mysterious, moving lights seen at night on the mountainside or
the cliff-top ; and many of the people, even men, were afraid of
going out in the dark. The most superstitious person in the
village — if also one of the most shrewdly comrnonsensical — was
Irish-born Agnes Rogers. It was she who told us how Ben Swain
came to be deformed, having short, unjointed arms that ended in
little hands where the elbows should have been. Agnes related
— and her voice took on for the occasion more of an Irish lilt

FIRESIDE TOPICS I 3 I

than it had at other times — how Ben's mother, just before his
birth, had been frightened one winter evening near the grave-
yard by a tiny figure that ran out from among the graves waving
short arms and screaming at her; afterwards the islanders pre-
tended that it was a penguin, but Agnes still clung to a half-belief
in the 'little folk* of her native mythology. Whatever the
explanation, Ben had certainly been born with deformed arms
that startlingly resembled a penguin's flippers.

On the whole there was a disappointing lack of local lore
among the villagers. There were very few home cures for illness
and no home-made poetry or legends. The islanders were fond
of singing and knew a number of 'airs'; but all of them were
imported and many of recent origin. The gramophone and
collection of records given to the island by King George V had
ousted the older songs. A few interesting survivals were sea-
songs, generally incomplete and incomprehensible. Emily
would sometimes sing a verse about —

CA wheel, a wheel,

A spinning-wheel,
A wheel without a rim . . . '

which seemed to contain a sly reference to the incident early in
our own acquaintance. It ended with a boisterously irrelevant
chorus :

* We'll all go down to Johnstown
And drink a tot of rum.'

Others she was fond of were 'Pull for the Shore, Sailors' and
'Throw out the Life-line.' Charlotte was alone in knowing the
words of a long, gory ballad of a girl murdered in a barn. She
sang it for us on her birthday: the story was bewildering, the
words often unintelligible, and the tune — as rendered by her
harsh, cracked voice — was anything but musical.

There were some indigenous customs, e.g. those con-
nected with birthdays. In every person's history three birthdays
were thought more significant than the others. They were the
first, the twenty-first, and the fortieth — these being considered

132 ROCK OF EXILE

the Important stepping-stones in life. Dances and parties were
held on these occasions, with special feasts of beef or mutton.
Each guest, on arriving, greeted the holder of the birthday with a
kiss and a slap — a kiss for love and a slap for the hard loiocks of
life. The normal practice of giving presents was reversed: it
was the person celebrating the birthday who was expected to
provide a present for every visitor. These gifts varied from a
specially knitted garment to a pot of potatoes or a freshly caught
crayfish. Of 'barfdays5 we saw a number while on the island
and attended the dance-parties; we also witnessed christenings, at
several of which one of our number was invited to * stand' as
'fardee/ or godfather; but we never saw a wedding. It seemed
that all the young couples were waiting for us to leave the island
before they would face the public embarrassment of that ordeal.

A recent innovation which gave greater publicity to such events
as these was our own newspaper, the Tristan Times. This was
produced at the station, edited, typed, and duplicated by the
meteorological sergeant. It appeared weekly and its price was
three cigarettes or two potatoes. Most of the villagers bought it.
Even those who could not read liked to sit in their cottage door-
ways ostentatiously poring over the latest issue. It was really
another form of gossip. The interest lay in seeing whose name
was mentioned this week: there was the same mingled fame and
notoriety as anywhere else in having one's name in print.

The paper contained news of the outside world, gleaned from
radio broadcasts, side by side with news of island affairs. In one
column appeared such items as:

Home-based bombers have made heavy attacks on Milan, Turin, and a
German R.D.F. station on the Baltic coast ...

while the next column announced:

The first sea-elephant of the season was discovered by D'Arcy Green
at the Hardies. He killed it and will collect its oil to-morrow. . . .
One dinghy went to Stony Beach for beef on Wednesday. . . . Alice
and Freddie Green are to have their baby daughter christened as soon
as the boats have been to Nightingale. . . „

~; ** "^*- <

a* .^w*k

•raw ?... .^ : .diriu* . ,. «. ^*. * £1

y*^
',^-« Z« ,V

• ^— - ' *\-^11>^3^.;^7sViV^;

/ % •" '^;^^Gf^^:f^|

- - ^^:; ^^^c-s^^^^J

^•r.^^as^i

-^ :- KX" -j^^^a^^

cj^jt«:*6^*Ste«s

ALL HANDS HELP TO HAUL A BOAT UP THE BEACH

L

WIFE GREETS HUSBAND WHEN THE BOATS RETURN

EDINBURGH SETTLEMENT

Named after the Victorian Duke of Edinburgh, who visited Tristan during his
royal cruise in 1867.

THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH GOING ASHORE

His Royal Highness in a long-boat going ashore from the royal yacht at

Tristan in January 1957

FIRESIDE TOPICS 133

As this news-sheet proved popular a magazine supplement was
added, first as a separate publication, edited by the padre, then as
a section of the newspaper. This contained a few items of a
general or humorous nature and articles about the island and the
islanders. It was an ironic commentary on our changed attitude
to the scene of our exile that, while the more literate islanders
read with interest the ' Overseas' news, most of us read the items
about the island. Our interests had moved from the station to
the village : they focused on the topics that were discussed at the
firesides that we now regularly visited.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Cold Grip

IN THE last week of March hands were called by Chief to man all
eight island boats for a trip to Nightingale. The object of the
trip was to collect petrel fat for use in cooking and in the little
lamps that would light the cottages during the winter evenings.
The trip was to be a short one, lasting two or three days. A
week later the boats had not returned.

The first day of April brought a foretaste of winter. Overnight
the wind had howled around the little hut on Herald Point and
the rain had rattled on its roof. The day dawned bleak and cold
and windy. Even when the rain stopped and the sun crept wanly
out, the wind remained brisk and there was a sharp chill in its
breath. The sea was running heavier than it had since before
Christmas.

It was unusual for any of our party to be walking in the village
in the morning, but on this occasion I visited the home of Widow
Charlotte with some clothes to be washed. She was sitting on a
low stone abutment at the eastern end of her cottage, a favourite
seat of hers, where she was sheltered from the westerly wind.
Past the end of her cottage a stream gurgled. On its other bank
stood the house where blind William Rogers kept his day-long

THE COLD GRIP 135

listening watch in an upright chair opposite the door. From that
doorway now came his wife Agnes and daughter Marie. They
both carried armfuls of clothes for washing in the stream. The
greeting which Agnes called out did not seem as cheerful as usual,
and Marie, though her smile was as blithe as ever, did not sing as
she banged the wet garments on a boulder to loosen the dirt from
them. There seemed to be a tension in the air of the whole
village. It was rather like the effect of a frost. But this effect
had been building up for the past six days ; the drop in ^mperature
had occurred only the night before.

After a couple of minutes Charlotte called out in her blunt
way:

' Haggle ! When you think they be back ? '

'How / know when they be back?' Agnes emphasized the
disgust of her retort by plunging an armful of clothes energetically
into the watron. ' Guess they is waiting till the wind haul out.'

'The win* is done haul out. The win' is in the sou' -west,'
Charlotte announced with dry finality.

'Then, reckon they is waiting till the swell die down.'

'They ain't never had to wait this long 'fore. '

Agnes apparently did not think this demanded a reply and there
was a break in the conversation, while Marie flayed the boulder
with a sodden shirt. Then Charlotte's voice continued in a
mutter that could not have been audible on the other side of the
stream and was not really addressed to me. 'Reckon they mus'
be done tryin' out 'at petrel fat 'fore now! . . . 'mus be! . . .'
After an interval of gloomy rumination she called out again to
Agnes.

'Haggie! You know what Mis' Repetto say?'

'What Missis Repetto say?'

'She say it like when she was a little gal, all the men go out in
the boat, for chase a ship, an' didn't never come back.'

'What Missis Repetto wanna say 'at fa'?'

'Mis' Repetto 'member time once 'fore when there ain't
bare four old men left on Tristan an' all the young ones daid in
the sea/

I 36 ROCK OF EXILE

4 What you wanna say 'at fa', Shawlutt? Is you wanna skeer
folks?'

Agnes gathered up the clothes in an accession of anger and
carried them dripping to the cottage. Marie threw a grin at me
across the stream as she jumped up to follow her mother.
Charlotte said no more, but remained seated, a heavy figure of
foreboding, with the shade of her widowhood like a black cloak
around her. She was thinking of her only son Wilson, away
with the other men.

There I left her and walked back through the village. In the
absence of most of the menfolk, it had a desolate air. I sensed
the horror of isolation that must have engulfed those wives of the
early settlers — severed at that time completely from the rest of
the world — when their men were lost. The memory of that
disaster, handed down through the recitals of Old Sam Swain and
Mrs Repetto, still haunted the imaginations of the women.

The tension of frost in the air relaxed a little and the sea became
quieter. But the atmosphere in the village was held in a grip
colder than that of frost: it was the stillness of tightly held breath.
Eight days now and the boats had not returned! Yet the wind
was from the south-west, the desired direction for the return
passage from Nightingale.

On the afternoon of the eighth day I walked, as several had
done each day of that week, along the road to the Potato Patches
at the western end of the shelf, from which the boats, if returning,
would be seen. I did not expect to sight them before other,
sharper eyes. I walked to get away from the apprehension that
gripped the settlement and was even invading our quarters.

The road was a deeply rutted cart-track, created as much by
custom as intention. Soon it dipped down into one of those
gulches by which, presumably, molten lava had once streamed
down from the crater of Tristan. This gulch had been named
Hottentot by the original garrison from the Cape; few of the
present islanders knew what the name meant. The road de-
scended by a deep cutting to a floor littered with boulders and

THE COLD GRIP I 37

devoid of vegetation. Above me rose the walls of the gulch.
Pausing there, with my range of vision bounded by arid rock and
empty sky, I was overcome by a sense of desolation. The village
and the sea were out of sight. All the way up to the still, void
upper reaches of the gulch, carved in the massy wall of the moun-
tain, not a weed stirred. I felt the strange stillness that hung
like an invisible presence deep down among the lifeless rock —
the stillness of utter negation.

Usually on Tristan two sounds were audible, the voices of wind
and sea. Since there were scarcely any trees there were no bird-
songs; even the sea-birds that screamed occasionally above the
beach nested on the other islands. Consequently, down here in
the gulch, below the wind, beyond hearing of the sea, the silence
was absolute and unnerving. It spoke of a solitude that would
be unbearable.

With a feeling of relief, as if returning to the known world,
I climbed out at the other side of the gulch. Just beyond there I
left the road and climbed a jutting wedge of mountainside called
the Goat Ridge. The steep turf-slants among the rocks were
terraced with tiny foot-tracks. Seen from up here among the
sheep-haunts the village and its shelf and the sea changed propor-
tions alarmingly. The horizon, now farther away, seemed tipped
upwards. The shelf seemed to shrink under my feet as I sat on
the springy turf of the ridge. The sea looked calm enough from
this height, almost glassy, a blue-grey reflection of the sky. I
could hear the surf again now, but it sounded only as a faint
persistent rustle. Far below me, around Herald Point, curled
long white ripples — as they seemed — like froth on the sea's lips.
There was nothing else in sight on the ocean.

How small, from up here, seemed the troubles of the islanders
— yet pathetic rather than insignificant! The vastness of that
world of water, the solitariness of that single upthrust of rock,
and the impersonality of both sea and stone seemed to annihilate
all struggle and achievement.

At Easter there was to be a holiday and a dance for the villagers.
All the young people would be there. The girls would wear

I 38 ROCK OF EXILE

their best dresses. Already they were thinking about it; and
more than once Emily had looked at the new frock she had made
and pressed the wide red sash of which she was so proud. For
one night the little hall would contain for these people all the
entertainment of the world ; and while they gave themselves up
to it, so earnestly, there in that one room full of noise and
vibrant with thudding feet, their cottages would stand empty of all
but a few old people and sleeping children.

Late in the evening the merrymakers would come home, with
flickering torches and clear voices in the night — the husbands and
wives, the young men and the girls — each to a dark doorway.
For a few hours they would have forgotten the wind that prowled
through the village in their absence, peering into cottages, nosing
round corners, snuffling under doors, slinking away among the
flax gardens. They thought that life was what throbbed there in
that little pleasure-hall, but it was nothing to the relentless forces
of life that stirred outside. There was something pitiable in the
intentness of their enjoyment as they circled like moths about that
single hub of light and noise. The windows of the hall on these
occasions radiated into the night a feeble glare of light, a rumble
of feet, a hum of voices; but these were lost in the immensity of
the sea and of the darkness that lay like a great weight on those
half-sunken cottages under the wall of the mountain.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Echoing Cry

* SAIL HO ! ' The cry echoed among the darkened cottages under
the mountainside. £Sa-a-il ho!' It seemed to issue from the
immense obscurity beyond the cliff-tops. 'Sa-a-il ho-o-oh!'
A third time it rang in the night, like a great voice from off
the sea.

Lights appeared in the village. Cottage doors opened. In
the house where I sat the click of Emily's knitting-needles was
stilled, and the room seemed to hold its breath in a silence broken
only by the distant thudding, like anxious heart-beats, of the surf
below the cliffs. Beside the hearth the girl's mother, tensed
from her usual apathy, listened for the repetition of that strained,
discordant cry. When it came she sprang up with the first show
of animation I had seen in her and cried: "The boats iss back!'
The tension broke in a bustle of domestic activity. Emily's
knitting was flung aside as she jumped from her seat on the bed.
Wood was thrown on the almost dead embers of the fire, water
splashed into a large pot in readiness at the hearthside. The two
little boys asleep on the couch stirred among their dark blankets

140 ROCK OF EXILE

and, amid the general clatter, Piers's sleepy-thin voice was heard
asking: 'What it is, Momma?5

His mother was too busy blowing up the cold ashes to answer
him. But his sister, as she lifted the pot on to the grill in the
fire-place, sang out: 'It's you5 poppa! The boats iss back!5
She clapped her hands and repeated like a chant, as she ran to the
outer door and threw back the top half with a rattle against the
wall: 'The boats iss back! The boats iss back!' In a moment
her shyness had been thrown aside as easily as her knitting.
When I joined her at the door she turned to me in excitement,
her black eyes shining and her lips parted in an unconscious smile.
Close together we leaned over the lower door hatch, straining
our eyes to pierce the darkness towards the sea. Women were
running between the cottages, borrowing crocks, calling out to
one another the news that the boats were home from Nightingale.

Soon torches were bobbing down the road towards the beach.
Emily ran back into the house to put a kerchief over her head and
to slip her arms into the sleeves of her father's spare coat. She
could be heard repeating to her young sister Angela, who was
awake in the bedroom, the news: 'Daddy's back! ' I opened the
door and descended the steps into the yard, trying to accustom
my eyes to the darkness. Emily's mother appeared at the top of
the steps with a steaming teapot in her hands and a cup threaded
by its handle on her little finger. She was calling back into the
house to Angela: 'Hangel, you best stay 5n moind the boys.5
Donald's voice protested wilfully: Tse coming down the beach.5
'You ain5t no coming down no beach,5 his mother contradicted.
'You gotta stay wid buddy and tiddy.5 Piers's peremptory treble
took up the formula with conclusive assurance: 'Yes, you gotta
stay, Dondil.5

Then Emily rushed out, almost pushing her mother down the
steps and calling out to me 'Iss you coming down the beach?5
as she ran on into the darkness, knotting the kerchief under her
chin. I set off warily in the same direction: this ground, littered
with rocks, was not familiar to me at night-time. Somewhere
in the gloom her mother's voice called plaintively: 'Hemly,

THE ECHOING CRY I 4 I

waffa' you don't carry this cup for me ? ' But it was impossible to
recognize any among the hurrying figures around me. Some of
them carried torches, smoky brands that blinded those who had
none and made the way seem blacker.

The crashing of the surf came to meet us and, as we crested the
slope down to Little Beach, the glimmer of the sea illumined the
scene. Then panic broke out. The voice of one of the early
arrivals cried that there was 'bare one boat,' Women ran
stumblingly down the steep bank and across the shingle towards
the dim hulk of that boat just above the surf. Emily's mother
went slithering past me on the pebbles, spilling half the tea from
her pot, mumbling £ David! David!' Then the foremost
torches lit up grinning faces of men clustered about the boat and
Arthur Repetto 's great laugh was heard above the surf and the
rattle of dislodged pebbles.

Only one boat had returned. But the others were still safe at
Nightingale. It had been the idea of headstrong Arthur or
'Panny' Repetto to make the return voyage alone, when the
opinion of his brother, Chief, had convinced the other boats'
crews that the sea was too rough. Arthur's docile crew had
acquiesced in his escapade. Old Gaeta, coming up to them on
the beach, said they 'musta be crazy to skeera the women lika
that.5 Arthur threw back his head to laugh the louder, his face
convulsed in the torchlight.

The boat had not been sighted earlier in the day because it had
not cleared the Bluff until after dusk. The wind had been high
and the men had been rowing continuously since seven o'clock
in the morning. They were glad of extra hands on the beach to
haul the boat high and dry and of the hot black tea that the women
brought. They had all stood up in the boat to join in the loud
hail that had startled the village, but now some of the younger
ones were too tired to share any further in Arthur's rollicking
enjoyment.

David Hagan was not in the crew of Arthur Repetto 's boat. I
was perhaps a little glad. I even hoped that Chief's caution

142 ROCK OF EXILE

would withhold the remainder of the expedition another day or
two on Nightingale.

But on the very next day the wind dropped, the sun shone, and
the other boats sailed home in sedate formation behind the
Canton. They were sighted from the Patches in the morning and
in the afternoon were visible from Herald Point. It seemed that
every 'lad' of the 'willage' had saddled his donkey and ridden out
to the Point to watch the boats returning. Throughout the
afternoon watch the boys galloped maddeningly round and
round the hut until it should be time to 'pynte' for the beach and
help with the unloading.

Going off duty at four o'clock in the afternoon, I left the hut
and walked to the edge of the cliff to get a better view of the
miniature regatta. The sun gilded the water, but in patches the
breeze ruffled it black. I stood watching the triangular sails, like
scraps of white paper, gliding across a dark patch of sea. Sud-
denly I could see them no more. I searched the ocean, looking
for the white flashes, until one of the boys, Edwin or 'Cabby'
Glass, reined in his donkey beside me and pointed laughingly at
some black specks on a stretch of gleaming silver. 'White sails
on the black water, black sails on the white water,' he chanted,
jeering at my ignorance, and wheeled his sure-footed mount
within perilous inches of the cliff-edge.

Before sundown the men were sipping their tea on the beach
and the boys were stringing cans of petrel fat across the backs of
their donkeys. The party had brought home well over two
hundred gallons of fat from Nightingale. Little Beach seemed as
populated as the sea front of a small English coast resort and the
bright kerchiefs and dresses of the women contributed to a
holiday effect, enhanced for English minds by the presence of the
donkeys. Reunions on the beach after an expedition of several
days always evoked high spirits, and on this occasion the men had
been absent nine days. Island manners forbade the demon-
stration of private affections, but shouting and laughing relieved
the feelings which had congested during the days of waiting.

In the general melee of unloading and carrying, the donkeys

THE ECHOING CRY 143

came in for many gratuitous thwackings, and the bullocks carting
away the heavier loads were persuaded to make the necessary
effort up the steep cliff road by a thonged whip laid cruelly
across their noses by the shouting teamsters, who ran backwards
up the slope ahead of them. Dogs added to the commotion by
darting eagerly among the people and occasionally falling into
snarling combats. George Glass's huge mongrel, Darby, engaged
in a fierce encounter with another dog, but George, stepping
between them grabbed Darby by two handfuls of his shaggy coat
and lifting him bodily above his head hurled him fifty feet out
into the surf. Darby rose and shook the water from his eyes with
a gesture of mild surprise, then splashed back to the beach, his
spirits effectively damped, while George turned placidly to
receive the cup of tea his wife had been holding for him.

'Sail ho!' was the cry with which the islanders heralded not
only the home-coming of their own boats but the appearance of
any vessel off Tristan. In earlier times ships had been frequent
callers. Sometimes, as the older men recalled, several whalers
would put in there during a day, or a small fleet would remain for
several days in the vicinity while the factory-ship anchored near
the beach. Some whaling captains had even established tem-
porary homes ;at the settlement while they remained in the South
Atlantic, With the passing of sail and the suspension of whaling
in those waters, the island had long been left unvisited: but during
our stay we received calls at long intervals from a mail and
supply ship from the Cape, and these visits caused among the
islanders almost as great a stir as had been provoked by our own
arrival.

As a topic of conversation the appearance of the next ship
supplanted even the weather. We were usually notified by radio
when the event was due and the villagers accepted as quite normal
our foreknowledge of it. Sometimes they would glance up
knowingly at the aerials, imagining that the wires could be
seen shaking when a signal was coming in. But in general they
found it easier to credit all ' outsiders ' with omniscience than to

144 ROCK OF EXILE

try to understand how they came by any particular piece of
information.

Our supply ship was generally a little tramp steamer diverted
from her course to South America. She arrived, as a rule, late in
the afternoon, flashing her signal-lamp from afar off. On many
such occasions the sea ran as high as our excitement and the
islanders doubted the possibility of launching a boat. Slowly the
ship steamed past the settlement, plunging head-down into great,
grey swells, her masts looking as slender as threads, her low hull
almost invisible among the waves. Considerately, the captain
signalled: 'Mail aboard. Do you wish to bring ashore to-night? '
Inconsiderately, we flashed back 'YES.' The steamer anchored,
a single island boat put off from Little Beach and there was a long,
hard pull out to the ship. Seen from close quarters, her grey-
painted hull was mottled with rust and red lead.

The arrival of a ship caused an upheaval of routine, both for us
and for the villagers. As soon as she anchored there was a
concourse to the beach. The boats were launched, and once our
stores had been brought ashore the island men, with the captain's
permission, went aboard with their calfskin trade-bags. These
contained local curios and home-made articles — sheepskin mats,
knitted garments, pouches made of penguin 'tossels,' oxhide
moccasins, model island boats, bullocks' horns polished and
mounted on wood — all of which the owners hoped to barter with
the seamen for bags of flour, old boots, or clothes. For us the
occasion meant a chance of hearing some first-hand news of the
'outside world/ of mingling for a brief period with new com-
pany, of seeing a few fresh faces . It was an opportunity we never
missed. Often the crew were Lascars, speaking little English,
but the officers were English or American, the engineers in-
variably Scots. And in the wireless cabin we could talk shop
with the operators.

In the week following the ship's departure, a sickness afflicted
the island. In the case of the villagers it was a physical distress,
a sort of influenza which they call c tissock. ' It affected especially
the women and children; and the odd thing was that only ships

THE ECHOING CRY I4£

coming from the Cape caused it. The vessels which occasionally
called on their way from South America brought no 'tissock.'
On us the visit had a different effect. It was in the weeks
following, with our company reduced again to the maddeningly
familiar circle of faces around the mess-table, that life on Tristan
seemed most barren. Our sickness then was mental.

Occasionally the cry of 'Sail ho!' announced the arrival of an
unexpected visitor. One evening, after dusk, an islander tapped
diffidently at the door of our quarters to tell us that a ship was
* signalizing. ' The operator at the station had not seen her. She
proved to be an American merchantman that had rounded the
Cape without putting in to port and was now in desperate need of
supplies. Two island boats were launched. The sea was making
up rough, but three of our party decided to accompany the
islanders. The ship signalled that she had lost one anchor in a
storm off the Cape and the captain refused to let go the other for
fear of losing it ; so she was continually drifting away from the
island.

Rowing out to her was hard work. At times the boat I was in
seemed to stand on end. A squall of rain helped the spray to
drench us thoroughly. When eventually we got alongside, she
was rolling heavily and the islanders were afraid that she would
roll over on the boat. As it was now dark, the captain shone a
searchlight on us. We managed to pull to the ladder. One
moment it plunged in the sea beside us, next moment it was
swinging madly above our heads. By luck as much as agility we
at last climbed on board, bringing the Americans enough food to
last seventy men ten days. We were given a warm welcome.

By the time we climbed back over the side of the ship, she had
drifted nearly five miles from the island. The captain wanted us
to pull to windward of him so that he could tow us nearer inshore.
The islanders protested that the boat was too light and would be
swamped. They hurriedly pulled away into the darkness. But
the American captain was not to be outdone: he was determined
to tow us. From his bridge he was evidently searching the gloom
for our boat. When we had been rowing for about an hour we

146 ROCK OF EXILE

suddenly found the ship bearing down on us in the darkness.
She seemed to be coming fast and looked incredibly huge. We
shouted, but could not be heard; we threw lighted matches
frantically in the air to show our position, so that she would not
ride us down. The oarsmen had to row furiously round the
ship's stern as she went by ; a few moments later she reversed her
engines and began coming astern. Again we had to pull tre-
mendously on the oars in fear of being drawn in by the suction of
her screws. It was unnerving yet laughable — being chased by a
ship in the middle of the ocean in complete darkness.

She went by so close that we could hear the skipper's voice,
apparently far above us, 'goddamning' through his megaphone.
In disgust he had given up the chase. It took us two and a half
hours to pull back to the shore. Just before midnight we
stepped out on the beach, sodden and chilled to the bone.

Another unexpected visitor was a large passenger liner, the
Rangitata. She carried no passengers on this trip; but she had
not, like most of her class, been converted into a troopship.
We sat in her lounge in soft arm-chairs on a deep-piled carpet,
being served with drinks by a white-coated steward. For an
hour of make-believe we became tourists glancing through the
port-holes at a strange island and a primitive settlement.

A more mysterious visitor was sighted one morning in April far
away to the eastward. The islanders at once declared that she
was a sailing ship. We dismissed the idea. Later, as she came
nearer, by the aid of binoculars, 'Doc* was able to make out
a three-masted, square-rigged vessel, proceeding in a south-
westerly direction. She had apparently no intention of standing
in to the island. Radio calls brought no reply and she was too far
away to read our signal-lamp. She passed out of sight to the
south, in the direction of Cape Horn, and we heard nothing about
her; a report to Simonstown failed to elicit her identity.

The anachronism of her appearance near Tristan seemed to
confirm our sense of isolation during those months when the
island was left alone, as if forgotten, in the glittering or grey-
hazed immensity of the sea.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Open Hearth

IT WAS disconcerting to have to do one's love-making in the
presence of the family. True Emily's mother usually retired to
bed as soon as she had brewed my evening tea, but her father
always stayed up until my departure. His motive was a sense not
so much of propriety as of the requirements of hospitality; but
there was something in the undeviating gaze of his dark eyes and
in the relentless affability of his smile that imposed a kind of
formality, almost a deference. I had already leamt something of
David Hagan during our stay on Inaccessible Island. It was
David's function in life to sit in the corner and smoke his pipe.
He did it in the living-room of his cottage, as he had done it under
the inverted boat on the beach at Inaccessible. Yet it was sur-
prising how potent an influence he could exert by the mere
presence of his lean, brown face at the corner of the hearth and
even a little, it really seemed, through the pipe-stem for ever
clenched between his dark jaws.

When he had been away on Nightingale and only his wife had

148 ROCK OF EXILE

crouched at the fireside, tending the pot, and Emily had perched
aloof in her own aura on the edge of the bed, her dark head
lowered over her knitting, the room had seemed without
character — a bare-walled compartment, to the corners of which
the feeble radiance of the bird-oil lamp never penetrated. The
individual components of the room: its walls and furniture; the
long sofa; the dark-blanketed bed, at the end of which Emily's
two little brothers lay asleep in their clothes ; the sorry-looking
table, where a cup and a teapot stood beside the tiny home-made
lamp; the painted name-board of the wrecked Mabel Clark,
inserted in the wall above the wide fire-place — all these features
had made separate little impacts on the mind. The people
sitting about the room had been distinct yet unrelated entities.
David's return had been like that of a familiar household object to
the exact light patch on the wall that had marked its old position.
Immediately the room had developed a harmony. It was im-
possible to be unconscious of his looming, yet often soundless,
presence at the hearthside. Even the furniture seemed to align
itself into a definite relation to the shadowy corner in which he
chose to sit: it was as if by a change of position he could draw
the very walls into a different shape.

There was in the room another silent presence, which had
at first encounter disturbed me — that of Wilson Glass, Emily's
persistent but unsuccessful suitor. For months he had been
coming to the house in the evenings and for hours sitting in a
changeless attitude on the long, wooden sofa, so that it had come
to be known as Wilson's sofa. It had never, so far as I had seen,
been shared by the girl herself. The first time that I had entered
the room and found Wilson sitting there, with his long, stocking-
clad legs out-thrust as if to impede my passage, I was nonplussed.
But since neither the girl nor her family seemed to pay any
attention at all to his presence, I soon learned to disregard it.
He remained a vague, undefined figure, always there in the back-
ground. There was even a certain comfort to be derived from
him, as from a shadow that confirmed one's own substantiality .

When I came to the house early in the evening, while David

OPEN HEARTH 149

was still out in the dinghy fishing, Wilson had already assumed his
nightly position on the wooden bench. As I clumped heavily up
the steps in sea-boots, to announce my approach, and pushed open
the outer door, I heard Emily's clear voice break off in the middle
of some boisterously inappropriate sea chorus. There followed
the excited shouts of the two little boys as they rushed to meet me
in the doorway. As I entered the girl's dark eyes flared a
greeting across the room. The time carne when she did not even
interrupt her singing, but smiled at me through the words and
eventually became so 'forward' as to twirl her billowing skirts in
a few impromptu dance steps about the room to express her high
spirits until her mother cried out to her to sit down and 'moind'
her f manners.5 It was the mother's continual dread that Emily's
vivacity would betray her into some dreadful effrontery.

Often I was greeted by the clatter of utensils being hurriedly
cleared out of sight. The islanders were always irregular about
their meal- times. No matter when I timed my visit, I would
arrive, in all likelihood, to find Donald and Piers being served
with a late tea or an early supper, consisting usually of the yolks
of two or three eggs boiled in milk to form 'skouse.' As I
appeared they would snatch up their dishes and spoons and with
much laughter scamper away on bare feet into the other part of
the cottage, occupied by their grandmother. The villagers were
bashful about eating in the presence of a 'stranger,' however
familiar he had become.

At sundown David returned from fishing. As soon as the
dinghy was seen to be making for the shore, the elder boy,
Donald, would rush away to the beach to help his father bring
home the catch. Together they would re-enter the house,
Donald dragging a bag, from which he would tip out on to the
floor a dozen live crayfish. The lobster-like creatures began at
once to crawl about in all directions very slowly, their stiff-
jointed legs clicking faintly on the boards. Excitedly Donald
would snatch them up one at a time by the foreleg and pop them
into a large pot of water that stood in readiness on the fire.
From the window-seat his brother Piers would watch with the

I £0 ROCK OF EXILE

contempt of his inferior years but superior wisdom. A lid was
placed on the pot to keep the crayfish down, and as the water
became hotter they could be heard stirring about inside. Later
in the evening, when the boys were already curled up asleep at
the end of the bed, the pot would emit a throaty, bubbling sound.

It was accepted as only proper that I should have the seat of
honour, on the tousled bed, where I was always afraid of sitting
on the sleeping children, and that Emily should sit beside me,
where I might place a discreet arm around her waist as I ques-
tioned David politely about his fishing or the recent potato
harvest. Only Wilson's outstretched legs crossed and recrossed
themselves uneasily.

The effect of the bird-oil lamp on the girl's face was flattering.
As she leaned near it to examine the stitches of her knitting, its
yellow glow lent a richness to her rounded cheeks and a soft
duskiness to the shadows of her eyes. Against the dimly lit room
her face hovered like a bright flower. At times she was gentle
and placid. Then, as she lifted her head in sudden laughter,
letting her knitting fall idle in her lap, her eyes would sparkle
with a bright darkness, sweeping up the discountenanced Wilson
in a careless glance, much as she would sweep up a fallen scrap of
dried fish with the whisk of brushwood which served as a broom
and stood in the corner near the door.

She held attention like a skein of wool carelessly in her hands,
which might at any moment let it fall. Her vivacity might
prompt her suddenly to bound from the bed where she sat and
throw open the lid of the chest which acted as a window-seat.
In this she kept her dresses and private treasures, which she
would produce for my inspection. On one occasion she brought
out a wide, blood-red ribbon, which she planned to show off at
the next dance. Sitting on the chest, she let down her hair, so
that it fell in a dark cascade over her shoulders. Then she
bound it loosely back with the ribbon, which shone among the
black tresses like a red carnation. With a smile of pleased
coquetry she posed for admiration.

While such diversions were being offered, David sat on a box

OPEN HEARTH I $ I

at the comer of the hearth, leaning forward over his widely
spaced knees, gazing into the flames under the crayfish -pot.
Shadows ran in the hollows of his cheeks as he sucked at his pipe ;
dull red high lights glinted on his cheek-bones. After a while
he removed his moccasins and leaned back, with his shoulders
braced against the wall, stretching out his stockinged feet and
watching the exchanges of his daughter and his guest with the
kind of interest that one bestows on playful kittens. Occasion-
ally he would insert a quiet remark or his teeth would flash in a
shy, friendly smile. But there always seemed to lurk in his eyes a
flicker of ironic amusement, which could more effectively check
the display of ardour than any fatherly interdiction. Not that
David was disposed to interfere. Quite the contrary. On one
occasion, when intimacy had created momentarily its own illusion
of privacy, I looked up to find on his face a smile of ineffable
benevolence. But the effect of that smile was wholly deflating.

Conversation with Emily was largely a programme of teasing
and being teased. Her only range of interest was in gossip about
the other personnel at the station and trifling scandal about the
other girls of the village. About the past or the future or about
the world beyond Tristan she had no curiosity. The present time
and place were to her sufficiently engrossing and she lived in them
vigorously, immune from the civilized disease of boredom.
When she had nothing better to do she would sometimes find
delight in a playful spite towards those she disliked — and even
more often towards those she liked. The only attention she ever
paid to Wilson was to turn on him with pretended amazement at
his presence and inquire maliciously:

4 What you iss sitting 'yah for, Wilson? Iss you trying to wear
out the seat of you5 trousers ? '

Wilson acknowledged with a sheepish smile his gratitude for
this much notice.

When Emily felt tired she went to sleep — promptly and with-
out regard far the place or company that she was in. Regularly,
before the evening was old, her dark, curly head would fall
against my shoulder and rest there in a benumbing position.

I 5-2 ROCK OF EXILE

Then David felt called on to pick up the slender skein of conver-
sation that his daughter had dropped. Emerging from his
hahitual taciturnity, he talked graphically and well. He spoke
about the ships which had visited the island — the Cachalot, the
Cap Pilar, the Joseph Conrad, Shackleton's Quest — and those which
had been wrecked there, including the schooner Emiljr, after
which his daughter had been named, and the Mabel Clark, of
which one of the name-boards formed a part of his house. He
told me about his cousin, John Hagan, who had left the island
years ago and still wrote letters occasionally from Cape Town.
He recalled the various whaling captains, most of whom had been
popular with the islanders, and the various missionaries, several of
whom had been unpopidar.

Sometimes he would ask about the outer world. 'What sort
of beach is yon-all got in England? Is it as big as Big Beach?'
I answered that we had a great number of beaches, some of them
miles long. He smiled with polite incredulity. He was curious
about snow. The islanders saw a thin coating of it sometimes on
the peak but never on the lower ground. I told David that some
countries had snow all the year and that it could lie in drifts as
deep as the cliffs above Little Beach. His imagination failed
before such an idea. And when he read in the Tristan Times the
numbers of 'Caimans' killed or captured, he refused to accept
them. 'Sure, there ain't 'at many people in the whole warl','
he declared.

For long periods, as if in retaliation for my stories of other
countries, David would talk about Nightingale Island, which he
assured me was a 'rale fancy' place, quite unlike Tristan: the birds
there covered the ground so thickly, he alleged, that they had no
room to fly off, but used to climb to the top of a tall rock to take
flight. Sometimes that pinnacle was so ' chock' with them that it
looked like a 'rock o' buds.' On the subject of Nightingale and
its birds David spoke, as did most of the men, with something
approaching enthusiasm. His voice was low but resonant, and
his eyes glowed with a sombre fire.

When I rose to say 'Good night,' the girl slipped without

OPEN HEARTH I £3

waking from my shoulder to a recumbent position on the bed,
where she would remain until the morning. She never knew at
what time I left the house. From his place on the sofa Wilson
did not stir. For all I knew, he might spend the whole night
there in silent vigil, while David continued to gaze into the
embers of the fire. All the way out to the hut on Herald Point,
where I had to keep my own solitary night watch, listening to the
tremulous piping of morse signals from invisible ships unknown
leagues away, I carried a vision of those two silent men watching
over the sleeping girl, like mourners beside a cherished corpse.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Wild Pursuit

THE SUMMER, which had on the whole been much better than we
had expected, was ending. Already the mornings were intensely
cold. Sometimes the sun would reappear, surprisingly warm,
but most days were squally. The wind, as always on the island,
was our worst enemy and the sea was often rough. All night
long we could hear it talking on the beach, foreboding the wild
months ahead.

Soon all the larger boats would be hauled up, by means of the
salvaged capstan of the Italia on the cliff-top, to the Boat Place,
out of reach of the surf; only the fishing-dinghies would remain
on the beach for use through the winter months. Before this
was done, however, there was one last outing to be made.
Gordon Glass and several other hands were to take one of the big
boats round to Stony Beach on the southern coast of the island.
They were going to kill a young steer in the herd of wild
cattle kept there. The occasion for the killing was the twenty-
first birthday-party of Gordon's son, Clement. In a society as
isolated and self-enclosed as that of Tristan it was natural that
birthdays should be events of importance to the whole com-
munity. They were celebrated by dances and parties, at which
special feasts of beef or mutton were provided for the guests.

So the killing of Clement's birthday steer was not an event
concerning only his family. The British Trader was the boat

WILD PURSUIT I$$

chosen for the outing and hands from several different families
composed the crew: Gordon Glass and, of course, his son
Clement; George and Godfrey Glass; Teddy Swain; Johnny
Repetto ; and Douglas Green. Three of them — Godfrey, Johnny,
and Douglas — had guns, Douglas's being a German model that
had been presented to him by one of the missionaries and of
which he was extremely proud. He had practised with it so
often that he was acknowledged, somewhat on trust, to be the
island's marksman.

A suitable day occurred about the middle of April, during one
of those intervals of beautiful calm when the sky and the sea
appeared poignantly blue after weeks of greyness. It was a day
on which I was able to join the party. We assembled at six-
thirty in the morning outside Gordon's house and by seven
o'clock we had put out from Little Beach in the Trader. The
weather being so calm and the wind in the right direction, we
were able to hoist sail as soon as we rounded Big Point, at the end
of the settlement plateau. Stony Beach lay four miles beyond
Sandy Point, where the apple harvest had been gathered, so the
first part of the journey was already familiar to me. Gordon
Glass, a slender, soft-spoken, sensitive-faced fellow, sat at the
tiller, and as we sailed smoothly through bubbling water past the
various gulch-ends and headlands of the coast, he entertained me
with their names. Some of the names were self-explanatory;
of others even the islanders had forgotten the origin. Farmost
Point; Shirtail Gutter; Jews' Point, where a ship carrying Jewish
emigrants from Europe to South Africa had been wrecked;
Softrock; Down-where-the-minister-landed-his-things; Halfway
Beach ; Blacksand Beach ; Noisy Beach ; Ridge- where-the-goat-
jump-off; Blineye. Finally came Stony Beach itself, which
appeared to deserve its name.

It was no more than a steep strip of shingle, with large boulders
half buried in the surf. The landing looked difficult. As we
approached, Gordon pointed out a disturbance in the sea where
an outlying pinnacle of rock, which he called a 'sleeper,' rose to
just below the surface, so that only a ridge of white foam

I £6 ROCK OF EXILE

betrayed its presence. He steered carefully between it and the
shore. As we drew nearer to the landing-place the sail was
lowered. The men took off their moccasins and stockings,
already wet with water in the bottom-boards, and stowed them in
disconsolate little piles under the gunwale of the boat. Then
they pulled to within a few yards of the beach, where George
and Godfrey, with trousers rolled up above their knees, jumped
out and waded ashore. The boat was held off by the oarsmen,
while the two on the beach gathered pebbles and threw them
down into the crannies between the great rocks at the water's
edge, to make a sort of slipway for hauling up the boat. For
long minutes we had to wait, rocking in the surf, gazing at an
unprepossessing shore.

Behind the beach the land fell away brokenly from the
mountainside, forming a shelf not unlike that on the northern
coast, where the village was built. But this scene was more
rugged. Over it lay the strange, inimical silence that confronted
one everywhere on the island away from the actual settlement.
Clouds drifted low over the slopes ; the soft lapping and splashing
of the surf seemed only to intensify the wakeful hush. As we
stared at the shore it seemed to stare back at us, malignantly.
The pebbles cast down by the two men on the beach made a
hollow 'clop,* almost wooden, as they settled into the crevices,
looking white among the wet rocks until the next rush of surf
washed them dark. The irregular sound of their falling echoed
so loudly that I glanced involuntarily ashore, to see if some strange
thing had been awakened there.

When the jagged teeth of the land had been levelled in this way,
the rowers took two mighty strokes on the crest of a wave,
boated their oars and leapt out, running the boat up the slipway of
pebbles, where the rest of us jumped out to help them. The
gear was unloaded, the oarsmen put their socks and moccasins on
again and we sat for a while in the long, moist grass that grew just
above the beach, eating our breakfast of cold roast potatoes.
Behind us stood — or rather sagged — the remnants of two little
huts that the islanders had built there years before. Like the hut

WILD PURSUIT 15-7

on Inaccessible Island they had yielded to the repeated assaults of
wild nature: only four lurching door-posts, an unnatural piling of
stones, which had once been walls, and some crumbling rafters,
from which bunches of dead grasses hung, showed where man's
hand had tried to mould nature.

Shouldering the guns, our party began to make its way up
through the long, coarse grass to the rocky ground above. The
landscape was wild, much wilder than that near the settlement.
A faintly marked path twisted steeply among scraggy brushwood.
The day had become gloomy, with rain-logged clouds swinging
low about the mountain. There was very little breeze, and
soon the hilly nature of the country shut away the only sound
that disturbed the air — the rustle of the surf along the beach.
The islanders climbed in single file, quickly and silently on
moccasined feet, at a slack-kneed pace that left me breathless.
They seemed to have become strangers to me, to have taken on
something of the alien, untouched wildness of the place itself.
I felt that if I spoke now they would round on me with a dark,
incognizant stare — even hostile.

Around us, as we climbed, rose the gaunt stumps and boughs of
trees, devoid of foliage and bearing only a few twigs. They had
a stark, blackened appearance, as if charred by fire, but their
condition was due to the furious south and south-east winds
which had whipped them bare and stunted their growth. At
length we came to a pocket of level ground, with the mountain-
side sheer above us and a group of low and curiously conical hills
shutting out sight and sound of the sea on the other side. In
this pocket even the air seemed to pause. Directly ahead of us
the ground rose to a sharp ridge. The islanders approached it
warily, and I gathered that the cattle were near. Fortunately
the wind was against us. We climbed the slope to the ridge and
lay flat just below the crest. Then I peeped over and gasped
with surprise.

Immediately below us the land fell away steeply to a wide
plain that must have been one of the largest tracts of level ground
on the island. Along its edge the sea curled and frothed. At its

I £8 ROCK OF EXILE

far end the land rose ruggedly again to meet the wall of the
mountain which marched out to sea, closing the shelf. Over
this plain were scattered cattle, a great herd, larger than I had
expected. Most of them were lying down, many of the cows
accompanied by calves . The bulls were standing on the outskirts ,
and the whole herd had an air of alertness not to be found in the
few domestic cattle that were kept at the settlement. One
black bull on the near edge of the herd was looking at the ridge
where we lay with a fixity that seemed to show suspicion of our
presence. Yet it was impossible that he should have got wind
of us.

The islanders were peering through the grass, lying flat on their
stomachs, examining the cattle. The distance was too great to
reveal any brands or other distinguishing marks. Half in jest I
asked Clement:

'Well, have you spotted the one we're after?'

With calm seriousness he replied:

'That young black one with the white nose, way obber the far
soyde.'

I was sure there were at least as many black steers as red ones in
the herd, and they all seemed to have white noses.

In spite of the black bull's suspicious scrutiny of the jidge, the
rest of the herd still lay scattered, unaware of our presence.
The nearest animal was about half a mile away. Yet the instant
that Godfrey Glass, rifle in hand and with hardly any movement of
his feet, quietly raised his lanky form, every beast in the herd was
on its feet; the black bull had retreated a few rapid paces, then
wheeled again to join his belligerent stare to a multitude of others
all fixed unerringly on the ridge, where a group of figures now
stood up.

Quickly and quietly Godfrey led the way down the steep slope
to the plain, where the cattle were beginning to mill, the bulls on
the outside, the cows and calves in the centre. There was no
lowing or bellowing, only a deep rumble that grew more and
more fearsome as we approached. Hundreds of hooves were
stamping, hundreds of horns were tossing with agitation which

WILD PURSUIT I 59

might have been fear, but to me signified ferocity. Faster and
more noisily they circled as we drew near; then, to my unvoiced
relief, the black leader broke the mill-wheel and headed the herd
away in a lumbering stampede towards the far side of the plain.

The men followed at an unhurried lope over the uneven
ground, trying to keep their eyes on the young steer that was their
target. They seemed to be in no hurry to come to close quarters,
and every time that they approached within shooting range the
herd went high-tailing away in a fresh direction after its leader.
At first this direction was always away from us, but soon anger
overcame fear and our black opponent changed his tactics,
bearing down straight upon us at the head of a thundering charge.
Then there was a frantic scramble and flounder to get out of their
path as the cattle thudded past, spittle flying from their mouths.

The islanders cheered and shouted, and two Glass brothers
roared with laughter as lumbering George Glass lost his footing
and rolled himself furiously over and over to get clear of the
pounding hooves. This sport, it seemed, offered most enter-
tainment to the cattle or to a detached observer; and since I
could not be of the former party I decided to become the latter.
Retiring from the chase, I climbed the smooth, pyramidal side of
one of the cone-shaped hills that I had noticed earlier. From
the top, like the spectator at Sir Roger 's beagle-hunt, I could
command a grandstand view.

The village people said that these hill-cones contained bottom-
less holes. At the vertex of the cone I had climbed was the
mouth of a hole, almost completely overgrown with bushes.
Whether the hole was * bottomless' could not be ascertained; but
a large stone thrown down the opening, after ricocheting from
the sides, sent back no audible thud from the depths. I con-
cluded that these holes were originally blowholes of the volcano
of which the island consisted: the symmetrical cones of earth had
presumably been thrown up ages before by the same volcanic
action.

From the hill-top the whole plain was visible. For an hour
men chased cattle and cattle chased men from one end of it to the

l6o ROCK OF EXILE

other. Only three shots were heard, and It was the third which
brought down the young steer. The rest of the herd rumbled
away to the other end of the level ground, where they formed a
long and motionless rank: not one pair of horns tossed nor one
pair of eyes dropped its relentless stare, as they watched the little
group of men in the middle of the plain skin the fallen beast and
cut the meat into portions small enough to carry back to the boat.
When at length the party began to move back towards the ridge
I joined them. They were in high spirits, their hands smeared
with the blood of the beef they were carrying. Only Douglas,
the celebrated marksman, looked crestfallen.

'Who shot the steer?' I asked.

'Jawhnnie!' was the chorus, and Johnny Repetto, the Chief's
youngest brother, a freckle-faced giant, grinned with embarrassed
pride.

The cattle, as we topped the ridge on our way back to the
beach, were still ranged in an implacable phalanx, bitter but
unyielding. It was mid afternoon when we pushed the boat off
again. As the wind was against us and rather stronger now than
it had been in the morning, the men had to row back. Once
round Sandy Point, we ran head-on into the wind and a rough sea.
For an hour the boat seemed hardly to move, while the hands
strained at the oars. The men encouraged one another with
gasped phrases : * Lawng strocks ! ' — c Fishermen's strocks ! ' The
wind battered us, water flew about us, darkness came. At last
the boat rounded Big Point and came into the calm lee water.
We were nearly home and it was late in the evening. The men
became jovial, as they always did when nearing the home beach.
They began to sing and laugh as they rowed. Gordon at the tiller
smiled happily. Moonlight was gleaming on the oar blades as
they leapt like flying-fish above the water after each stroke;
bursts of phosphorescence ran like silver fire on the black surface.
It was a good home-coming.

Off Little Beach we stood up in the boat and gave tongue
together in the long-drawn hail: 'Sail ho-o-oh!' Lights ap-
peared in the village and began to bob through the darkness

WILD PURSUIT I 6 I

towards the beach. The scene reminded me of the night when
Arthur Repetto had returned unexpectedly from the Nightingale
trip, but this time I saw it from the opposite point of view. As
we came in through the kelp-reef, the women were already
waiting with pots of hot tea and boys were waving smoky torches
to guide us in.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Season of Spite

EARLY in May the island was assaulted by an easterly gale. The
surf roared right up under the cliffs and lashed itself into a fine
frenzy, smashing one of the boats and snatching away the lower
portion of Little Beach Road. Seen from the cliff-top, the sea
was a mass of churning white that drove in headlong stampede to
the shore, thundering at the rock-face until it vibrated under one's
feet. Flecks of salty spume, like foam from gaping jaws, were
hurled high by the breakers. White froth seethed and jostled
about the black rocks that stood impregnably in the surf, and the
sea flung about them its stinging spray, only to be blown back like
smoke by the wind.

The gale lasted for four days. At night the island seemed to
quiver and groan like a ship in a storm. The fifth day dawned a
tremulous gold, the air washed clean, the contours of rock and
headland scoured by the wind. A rainbow trembled into exis-
tence and alighted tiptoe on the sea. Water drained in several
cascades from the rim of the mountain; 'watrons' bubbled
brimful to the cliff-edge; the big fall arched its swelling neck,

SEASON OF SPITE 163

the crest of it blown back upwards in a mane of spray. ' Did you
never see water fly uphill?' laughed the islanders, happy like
stormy petrels when the wind blew.

Before midday Arthur Repetto reported large quantities of
wood washed ashore in the region of Pigbite. Five dinghies
made journeys to the beaches beyond Big Point and the men
discovered that wood lay all along the * eastward.' They brought
word, too, that some thousands of tons of earth had slipped into
the sea near Sandy Point where the slight fall in March had almost
brought disaster to the apple outing.

Normally an islander finding drift-wood claimed it as his own.
If he was unable to carry it home at once, he would 'put it up,'
that is, build it into a neat stack beyond the reach of the surf.
Another islander finding it would know from the stack that the
wood had been claimed. But on this occasion there was so
much wood and the surf was still so menacing that Chief named
a day for all able men to go round to the eastern beaches and
'put up' the wood lying there, so that it would not be washed
away. It was then to be shared equally.

In the week following the storm, four little American ' liberty'
ships, all eastward bound, put in to the island one after another.
They had suffered damage to their cargoes and radio equipment.
Unfortunately the sea was too heavy for the islanders to gain
much trade from the unexpected visitors. Two days after the
last one left a small party of us stood in the evening and watched a
ship's rescue raft float in from the sea on to the beach at Flat-
rocks, where the island men secured it. The rations were gone,
but the fresh- water tank was still half full.

For some weeks the wind remained in a turbulent mood. The
air was thick with dust and litter blown from the thatch of the
cottage roofs. Walking was difficult and children were kept
indoors. It was dangerous to approach the cliff- top except in
human chains of three or four, holding on to one another's hands.
The wind did not blow steadily, but in bursts and salvoes, and the
villagers advised us : * When you hear a puff comin', stand or duck
till it's past — then go on quickly.'

164 ROCK OF EXILE

On Herald Point the operator huddled over his instruments,
listening to the walls battered by relentless gusts, feeling the
floor tremble and the whole hut shake, watching his aerials
whirled around like skipping-ropes. After four hours the relief
operator, in flapping oilskins, came scudding before the wind,
like a full-rigged schooner — or a mud-spattered goose with her
plumes buffeted awry. Flying past, he caught at the fence outside
the hut and hung there bedraggled for a moment before lurching
forward, his outstretched hands pawing for the door. Once
inside he peeled off his dripping oilskins, climbed out of his sea-
boots, and collapsed in the chair. The relieved operator laced his
sou'wester under his chin and launched himself out into the
turmoil. Regaining his feet and bent almost double, he began
to battle his way back towards the quarters, stopping every few
inches in his progress to turn and lean on the wind while he
regained his breath. Sometimes, giving up the attempt, he came
flying back like a wet rag blown against the fence.

There were nights when the wind dropped. In its place there
was snow on the mountain peak, and the air was gripped in the
iron chill of the pack-ice creeping slowly northward from the
Antarctic. Other nights were so black that the middle watch-
man on his way out to the hut at midnight would stumble right
past it en route for the cliff-edge, where only the rumble of the
surf, suddenly louder, would pull him up sharply, with one foot
exploring tentatively the empty darkness in front of him ; or his
glimmering torch would unexpectedly reveal beneath his very-
toes the black yawn of Hottentot Gulch. Then the anxious
operator on duty in the hut would open the door and peer out,
only to see a wavering light coming from the wrong direction
and, remembering the island tales of Jack-o'-lantern, would
hurriedly slam the door.

Towards the end of May the weather improved a little.
There were intervals of sunshine poignantly bright, and the air
held a tinge of melancholy, colouring the scene which, soon now,
we should be leaving. The land sloped away from the Goat
Ridge on the far side of Hottentot Gulch in a way that had long

TOM SWAIN HOLDING FRESHLY CAUGHT CRAYFISH

TWO ISLAND FAMILIES
i. Reg (Bunty) Rogers, his wife Dorothy, and children.

A Tristan child of to-day.
She is wearing shoes bought
from the store.

2. Johnny Repetto, his wife
Margaret, and children. The
boy's sailor-suit, the shoes
worn by Johnny and his wife,
and the slightly shorter
feminine dresses reveal post-
war fashions.

SEASON OF SPITE I 6 £

become familiar through the windows of the wireless hut. And
those cottages, so low, so grey, so earth-born under their steeps
of bleached thatch! Their identity was lost among the bolder
outlines of nature. Through the haze of sun-shot mist the village
became almost invisible, a confusion of irregularities among the
rocks and gullies, a crumble of dust at the mountain foot. It
was impossible to believe that there really were homes there.

At close quarters nothing could have been more desolate than
the cottage gardens, now that even the few geraniums and dwarf
sunflowers had died. If the islanders had all died too, or disap-
peared, like the goats and the seals, it would have taken the wind
and the rain and the sun only a year or two to obliterate all traces
of their lives there. Stone walls would have tumbled among the
boulders ; thatch and rafters would have caved in, becoming again
mere hay and sticks ; the grass would have sprouted through the
floors and around the doorsteps. Nature, which had already
devoured the huts on Stony Beach and Inaccessible Island, was
always waiting just round the corner of the mountain.

At Whitsun came an annual event in which all the men and boys
— and dogs — of the settlement took part. This was the great
Rat Hunt at the Potato Patches.

The 'hunt' occupied a whole day. It was a cold day, but keen,
clear, and fine, with a spring in the turf and a tingle in the air.
During the morning most of our party found an opportunity of
joining the outing. The men were divided into gangs, under
leaders, and the hunt took the form of a competition. They
were armed with 'spears' made from sticks with large fish-hooks,
hammered out straight, fastened to the ends. The real hunting
was done by the dogs, half a dozen or so attached to each team:
they located the nests among the walls of the enclosures ; they
announced their finds with barks and eager yelps, then stood by,
as the nests were uncovered, to pounce upon the rats. The men
and boys assisted by stabbing with their spears among the loose-
piled stones or lunging at the rats as they broke cover. As each
rat was killed one of the boys would pick it up, nip the base of its

I 66 ROCK OF EXILE

tail between his thumb and forefinger and, with a sharp, deft
movement, remove the outer skin, leaving a blood-stained stem.
These tail-skins were kept as a record of the number of rats killed.
At the end of the day achievements would be compared and the
team holding most tails would be the winners. There was no
prize, but the element of competition stimulated the hunters.

The dogs needed no stimulation. As the men pulled aside the
stones where a nest had been found, Watch and Bruno and the
others stood waiting, their jowls drooling and every limb
quivering with eagerness for the kill. Their fever spread to the
men. There was tension in waiting to see which way the rats
would jump ; there was savage enthusiasm in stabbing frantically
at the would-be escapers ; there was fierce triumph in hearing the
squeal of a skewered victim. Grey bodies, with pale, exposed
bellies and red, raw tail-stems strewed the grass. Blood smeared
the hands that nipped off the tails ; blood dyed the spikes of the
miniature * spears'; blood raced in the veins of the hunters,
colouring cheeks that tingled in the frosty air.

There was little talking. The only sounds were the excited
barking of the dogs as they found a nest, their agonized whining
as they waited for it to be uncovered, the squeaking panic ot the
rats in the wall before they darted out, the panting of the men as
they jumped and stabbed, and— most animal-like of all — the
occasional yell of human triumph as spike pierced flesh.

At midday the women appeared, bringing the men's lunches in
sheepskin bags. Even Widow Charlotte came, balancing her
great, unwieldy body on the back of her diminutive donkey,
Nancy. Meals were prepared and eaten in a little stone hut,
where a fire had been lit. On a day that was ideal for the enjoy-
ment of food in the open air it seemed to us ridiculous to crowd
into a dark interior, dense with wood-smoke and steam from
boiling potatoes ; but the islanders would have thought it barbaric
to eat out of doors in the presence of women and 'outsiders.'
They filled the hut, the men standing or squatting on the earthen
floor, the older women sitting on boxes and bags of potatoes, while
the younger ones jostled for places at the fire. Even the dogs

SEASON OF SPITE I 67

squeezed inside, sniffing and snarling at one another in the
sharpened rivalry of the chase.

The islanders had no conception of organizing such gatherings
on a communal basis. As in all other aspects of island life, it was
every family for itself, and there were shouts of anger and scorn
for the housewife who failed her men-folk by losing — to a more
thrusting neighbour — & chance of getting her pot on the fire.

After lunch the hunt continued until the wintry sunset stained
the sea and the mountain-face with the same blood colour as
daubed the hands of the hunters. The air became thick and
murky, as if glutted with bloodshed. The dogs tired of yelping
and the gangs of men converged with slow, satisfied steps on the
road, where the women waited with the donkeys. Bloody
trophies were counted and recounted, amid argument and
contradiction. Johnny Repetto's team was finally acknowledged
the winner, with 133 tails. Johnny flourished them aloft in a
crimson hand and declared that he would hang them in triumph
above his mantelpiece. Margaret, his wife, with sharp, hand-
some features and snapping black eyes, threatened instead to feed
them to him in soup for his supper.

In all, 620 rats were killed that day at the Patches; but there
would be hundreds more to gnaw the potatoes before the spring
came.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Seas Bounty

AUGUST, as old Gaeta remarked, was a 'rusty' month — the last,
raw edge of winter, grating like a rusted file. The breeze was
still a cold blade, cutting the sea into sharp ridges. Snow was
seen on the peak by the men out in their fishing-dinghies: for
there were intervals of fine, if bleak, weather, during which
fishing was the main activity.

When the lee was £up' — that is, when the wind was from the
south or south-east and the sea immediately off the settlement was
in the shelter of the mountain — many dinghies might be seen
bobbing on the relatively calm water. There would be good
catches, at this time of the year, of snoek, blue-fish, red soldier-
fish, cod, mackerel, 'five-finger ' and, nearer inshore, crawfish or
crayfish. Small cuttle-fish or, as the islanders called them,
'catfish' were used as bait, the men and the boys tearing pieces
from the jelly-like tentacles with their teeth to fix to the hooks.
The village folk liked the snoek and the blue-fish. Often the
men would row out two or three miles in search of the larger
blue-fish and were very disgruntled when they brought inboard
by mistake a great steambras, which they could not eat. We
preferred the flavour of the small soldier-fish and five-finger.

Whales were a constant nuisance to the fishermen. Schools

168

THE SEA'S BOUNTY 169

of them were now back in the vicinity of the settlement, often
close in to the shore. Throughout the day and more especially
at night they could be heard blowing — regularly sounding off the
watches, it seemed, on their weird, watery trumpets. They
always followed the calm water, and so, when conditions were
most suitable for the island fishermen, the whales would be
basking and playing in the lee just off the beaches. They did not,
of course, attack the boats, being generally placid and not
unamiable creatures: seen at close quarters from the boats, as
they stood upright on their tails looking like immense bottles
floating upside-down in the water, the expression of their faces —
shaggy with barnacles, like long whiskers — was almost benign.
But they had a habit of rising directly underneath boats or so close
alongside that they made rowing impossible. One whale,
breaking water close to a dinghy, canted it over so suddenly that
Sidney Glass was thrown overboard and landed on the whale's
back. The whale submerged, carrying Sidney with it, but,
instead of sounding, surfaced again a few yards farther off, still
bestridden by the sodden, breathless islander. The rest of the
boat's crew cheered and shouted with laughter. When Sidney
had forsaken his mount and swum back, he was helped into the
boat by his brother Godfrey, with no greater harm than a cut in
his leg from the hard, sharp edge of the whale's fin.

Sharks also swam in these waters. Sometimes the islanders
killed one, but rarely troubled to bring it ashore. I did see one
that had been killed and brought to the beach by Johnny Baptist
Lavarello. Its great, grinning mouth, about a foot across, was
armed with a double row of teeth. The jaws had to be levered
open with a strong stick and when released they slammed shut
like a steel trap. When Johnny removed some of the shark's
skin, the flesh appeared remarkably white and looked edible.
The islanders had never tried eating it, though they sometimes
boiled down the liver, from which they obtained a very clear oil
for burning in their lamps.

More frequently they made oil from the blubber of sea-
elephants. These monsters were about the strangest of the

I 70 ROCK OF EXILE

creatures that formed the islanders5 harvest from the waters
around them. They belonged to the same family as the seal and
sea-lion, but were much bigger, the longest being as much as
twenty feet, with stiff whiskers and two long, down-curving
tusks or fangs. The islanders spoke of sea-leopards with spotted
coats, but I never saw one of these. I had seen three sea-ele-
phants on Tristan, and the fourth was shot by the Rogers twins,
'Bunty' and Rudolph, on Big Beach one morning in August.

When I went down to see it the creature was still alive,
although it had been shot through the left eye. Its eyeball had
emerged tri-partially out of the socket, rather like a section of a
telescope. The other eye was half closed, but showed by its
brightness that life still painfully existed. The great body was
smeared with blood intermingled with fine grains of black sand
that were almost indistinguishable from the hundreds of flies that
had settled on the animal's head. The flies crawled into the
half-bunged eye and out on to the parapet of the blinded one.
They wallowed in the thick, bubbling blood that oozed from the
nostrils. The elephant was bleeding internally and every attempt
at breathing was choked by the blood flowing into throat and
nostrils. The creature retched, with convulsive heavings of its
huge fat carcass. The convulsions sent rippling movements
along its flabby sides and forced the blood, mingled with bile and
water, to gush out of the gaping mouth and to spurt from the
nostrils in two streams, of which the arc gradually diminished
as the retching stopped, until there was merely a treaclish dribble.

I asked Bunty to kill the elephant at once. He said that he
couldn't spare another bullet, but he poked a stick into the flabby
belly and rocked the body a few times on its side. All the
muscles tightened spasmodically in one last, gigantic retch that
sent the blood washing out of the yawning, straining mouth in
such a flood that even the flies rose in a cloud from the animal's
face and settled again only as its head fell back in the purpled
sand, finally exhausted. The one unmutilated eye was almost
closed, and over it was spreading a glassy film. A few subsiding
swells undulated the soft belly and the sea-elephant was dead.

THE SEA5S BOUNTY 171

The twins left it on the beach and returned to the settlement
to fetch their donkeys to carry the blubber. They were going to
skin the elephant in the afternoon.

It was a fine but sombre day, with the wind from the south-
east, so that five dinghies were off fishing in the lee-water north
of the settlement. At about two o'clock in the afternoon I
walked along the Upper Road with little Bernard Dominic
Repetto and three unsaddled donkeys, halter-led. *Barnett/
as he was called, an intelligent boy of about twelve, pointed
knowingly to the distant white caps east of the settlement and
observed that the 'heas'erly breeze' was 'working out.' By late
afternoon, he prophesied, the wind would have moved right
round to the east and the sea would be choppy off the beach.

The twins had already been busy for some time on Big Beach,
skinning the elephant. When we arrived I was startled to see a
naked, red carcass that had a horrifyingly human aspect as it lay
on its back in the sand. With blood-dripping fingers Bunty was
holding up one of the flippers while he cut away the last patch of
skin from under the arm-pit. The bone of the flipper stuck out
alarmingly like a human elbow. The thick, grey skin had now
been completely removed from the body as far up as a line round
the neck and under the chin. Below that line the body was raw
meat: above, the grey face preserved a look of absurd geniality,
with its long, stiff whiskers standing out like those of some
martial old gentleman lying on his back in the sedate, pot-bellied
nudity of his bath.

Bunty and Rudolph began cutting away the thick layer of fat
from beneath the skin for blubber. They were 'assisted' by a
number of boys, aged from six upwards, who had assembled on
the scene. Donald Hagan, I noticed, was — inevitably — among
them: he would not have missed any adventure on the beach.
Satisfied with having got their hands and arms smeared with
blood, the boys ran off into the surf which was already making up
heavily on the beach. They splashed about, trying to rescue a
small cask that had drifted in but was carried away from them by
the receding surf at every attempt to salvage it. 'Barnett,'

172 ROCK OF EXILE

considering himself at twelve years old one of the men of the
party, remained with Bunty and 'Twin5 and remarked with con-
tempt on the behaviour of 'those boys.5

When the work of stripping was finished and the lengths of skin
and blubber had been laid across the backs of the three sad-eyed,
acquiescent donkeys, the boys eagerly rolled the carcass of the
sea-elephant down to the edge of the water, where the surf
reached out and snatched it back. For a while the red body was
rocked up and down, as if affectionately, by the waves. It
seemed even to come to life again, curling and rolling in the
water, still with that shocking resemblance to a human body.
A couple of sea-hens, having waited their opportunity, wheeled
low and settled on the floating corpse, pecking at its eyes* The
boys waited long enough to 'fire5 stones at the birds before
following the men and the slow-stepping donkeys up the road
from the beach. The sun was already mellowing the sky in the
west; and, as 'Barnett5 had foretold, the breeze had 'backed5 so
considerably that the choppiness of the sea off the settlement was
making the fishing-dinghies 'pynte5 one after another for the
shore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Scraping Cards

IN A GUST of energy and of almost predatory goodwill, I had been
painting the interior of David's house, using paint smuggled from
our own stores. The supply had been sufficient for only one
thin coat but for the present the boarded insides of the cottage
shone sleekly in two shades of battleship-grey, and the name-
board of the Mabel Clark above the fire-place gleamed a dark
green, with proud black lettering. For the duration of my
surreptitious activity the living-room had been vacated and the
family had moved into the 'east side'-the smaller room occu-
pied by David's mother. So, when I came to the house in the
evening, after sneaking a glance of stolen pride into the long,
glossy-walled state-room, which now looked like the dim after-
cabin of a timbered ship , I had to scrape open the badly hung door
of the inner partition and join the company in the less resplendent
apartment of the 'heas'soyde.' , , , i . • fl

It was a square room, with a particularly solid-looking fire-
place and well-trimmed, flush stone walls, which had not been—
like the walls in David's part of the house-lined with wood.

174 ROCK OF EXILE

OH Susan had tried to improve their appearance with cuttings
from ancient magazines that had been left by one of the ministers.
That she had not understood many of the crudely coloured illus-
trations was clear from the fact that she had pasted them on the
wall upside-down. However, this made little difference now,
since most of them had peeled loose and hung down in tattered
fringes, casting odd shadows in the lamplight. If the room had
been submitted to the hard, revealing brilliance of electric light,
it would have appeared bare and shabby ; but the friendly glow of
a bird-oil lamp awoke restless shadows in the corners, made a
fantastic map of the cracks and depressions in the wall surface
and evoked the inherent mystery of household objects.

On the table against the wall, beside the teapot standing in
readiness for my visit and the container of petrel fat in which
the lamp-wick burned, lay a little pile of sheep's wool, picked,
washed, and oiled ready for carding. And beside the hearth, in
easy reach of the wool on the table, Old Susan, seated on an up-
ended cask, plied the two wooden * cards' on her knee. She did
not raise her eyes as I entered, but her low, cracked voice called a
greeting across the room and invited me to sit down, while her
hands continued without interruption their rhythmical scratching
of one card on the other. From a lean, dark face at the other
side of the hearth came a flash of splendid white teeth as David
gave me his warm, shy smile of welcome. 'Good evenings*
over, I found a seat near Emily on the long, blanket-covered
couch which evidently served as Susan's bed.

David relapsed into the pose that was his customary relaxation
after a day's fishing or 'puttin' in.' Perched on a box, his feet
set firmly apart, his elbows on his knees, back rounded, he gazed
into the flames and sucked in the hollows of his bronze cheeks as
he drew at his pipe. A forelock of black hair was brushed
across the upper part of his brow, where the skin, screened from
the weather by the peak of his cap, was surprisingly pale. He
leaned forward to blow up the embers under the pot in which
water was boiling for my 'drink,' then turned on his seat and
taking his pipe from his mouth asked: *Iss you-all comin' along of

SCRAPING CARDS I J $

the hoighlanders to Noightingale this month for pinnamin heggs ? *
I told him that it was unlikely that I should be able to join this
trip. He seemed distressed: to David it was a prospect for
regret that I should leave Tristan without visiting Nightingale
Island.

Against the third wall, on a bench, sprawled Wilson, Emily's
unregarded suitor, his chin sunk on his sullen chest, his long legs
in white woollen stockings stretched out in self-assertive non-
chalance. He was trying to ignore the fact that he was ignored.
But a malicious croak from old Susan — 'What you iss sitting there
fa', Wilson? Ain't you got no talk?' — repeatedly shattered his
precarious composure. The old woman sat upright on her little
keg, her feet close together, head slightly lowered, her billowing
skirts almost hiding the seat. Her lower lip was thrust out, her
old eyes half closed amid wrinkling skin, her wispy eyebrows
shot up in a myopic stare at the work in which her hands but not
her mind were absorbed. A faded green kerchief was knotted
about her head, with a roll of grey hair and fine silver threads
showing in front. A grotesque shadow wavered on the wall
alongside her like the silhouette of a witch engaged in some
sinister ritual.

Emily's mother and her young sister Angela and the two boys,
Donald and Piers, were already asleep in the 'west side,'
breathing the smell of fresh paint — which had kept the children's
curiosity alive for days.

Among the flickering lights and the dark, still figures in their
sdmbre poses, the centre of life and colour in Susan's room was
Emily herself. Even while she sat quietly at my side on the bed,
she seemed full of vitality. Leaning my shoulders back against
the frail partition wall, I could watch the poise of her head with
its gleaming black hair gathered at the nape of the neck, the
glowing curve of her cheek, like the side of a dusky peach, the
mobile play of her rounded features as she turned her vivacious
attentions from one person to another. She sat erect on the edge
of the couch, wearing a bright, yellow-patterned dress — 'Yalla'
for jallous ! ' she always said — and a red sash. Ostensibly she was

176 ROCK OF EXILE

knitting, as the island women invariably were, but at every
teasing remark that babbled from her lips, her hands holding the
needles fell still in her lap. Her mother usually had to finish in
haste the knitting of any garment that Emily had promised.

By now her shyness had completely given place to buoyant
energy. Springing suddenly from the bed, she bounced towards
the hearth on her moccasins, with a rustle and sweep of many
petticoats, to see for herself why the water was taking so long to
boil. Her movement in that dark room with its motionless
figures was like the bustling of a noisy bird of gay plumage — a
bird that was plump enough to make the floor-boards vibrate
under its feet.

'What's got into 'at owd pawt? ' she inquired of the chimney,
and gave the pot a thrust farther into the red crumbling sticks.

Crouching on her heels before the hearth, her skirts outspread
on the floor, she looked back mockingly over her shoulder, her
cheeks curving and her fathomless dark eyes dancing like the fire-
light.

'WanV you didn't bring me no sweets from you' canteen
to-noight?' she demanded. Then, relapsing into the third
person and addressing the room at large, as was a habit of hers,
she exclaimed in a lilting drawl: 'Moind jou, 'at man iss a mean
fella!'

Her father muttered rebukingly down his pipe-stem, and the old
woman, without looking up from her scraping cards, screeched
in a thin, quavering voice :

* Boye de Good Massy, 'at Hemly iss a higorant gal ! '

Emily's lips parted in a smile of delight at having so impudently
outraged the island code of hospitality. With her brown fingers
she tore a morsel to eat from one of the freshly caught fish that
hung to dry, belly-opened, from hooks in the wide chimney-
place. As soon as the pot boiled she snatched it from the fire
and proceeded to make a brew of that anonymous * drink' which
was the token of welcome. 'Teeming out' a cupful, she
advanced on me with careful, mincing steps, balancing in one
hand the cup and saucer and in the other a bowl of ' sweetening.'

SCRAPING CARDS 177

This evening ritual was always an occasion of exaggerated polite-
ness and barely constrained mirth.

While I sipped the hot, black liquid and David smoked and
Emily chattered, the brushing of old Susan's wool-cards continued
with unremitting monotony. It paused only when she stopped
to remove a roll of wool from the lower card and drop it on the
growing pile of such rolls on the seat of a chair that she had
turned around to face her ; the chair stood waiting in the middle
of the lamp-lit room, patiently, like an absorbed child listening
to a story at its nurse's knee. The old woman took a fresh
handful of wool from the table, flicked it on to the upper card and
subsided again into the slow rhythm of her relentless wrist action.
The same performance was repeated over and over again.

David threw some more sticks on the fire. Little flames shot
up at once, flickering on the various cooking-pots, lighting up the
cobwebs at the back of the chimney, and chasing tiny shadows
among the lumps of soot that caked the sloping firestone — &
distinguishing feature of the Hagan cottage. The wood was fairly
green and sizzled when it was first thrown on. Sap oozed from it
in a whitish froth, and David observed that the men sometimes
used this as a shaving-soap. They also used wood-ash as soap for
washing, when nothing better was available.

Eventually Emily teased herself into tiredness and impulsively
curled up on the bed like a cat, at my back, her face buried in the
pillow. My left hand was underneath her side, tightly clutched
in her own. It was pleasant to grasp a hand that was young and
gentle, yet strong and used to hard work, the knuckles roughened
but the palm soft and warm and before long a little moist. She
was drowsy, yet still half awake. When some turn in the
desultory talk amused her, a subdued gurgle emerged from the
pillow and my wrist beneath her side felt the ripple of her
stomach. I wondered whether David understood that while I
replied solemnly to his remarks about potatoes and boat trips,
his daughter and his guest were indulging in the only physical
intimacy that was possible in the presence of the family.

I felt completely at my ease in that room. David's voice was

178 ROCK OF EXILE

low and very slow, and there were long, unstrained pauses in
which I heard above the scrape of the wool-cards the rising wind
in the chimney, the crackle of wood collapsing on the red hearth,
and interminably the distant boom of the surf. The tender
flame of the lamp had become smaller and was haloed in a faint,
golden mist: the wick needed pricking up with a pin. But no
one made the effort. Presently Emily began to snore in a most
unfeminine key and her hand relaxed its grip on mine, which had
become very hot and almost numb. The evening had arrived at
that point when David took off his moccasins and changed his
position on the box, leaning back against the wall, stretching out
his legs, crossing one over the other and bringing one forearm
across his body to cup the elbow of the other, which still held his
pipe to his mouth. By now, however, both our pipes were
smoked out ; we merely sucked on them and clicked the stems
between our teeth as occasionally we talked.

So, after the laughter and the teasing, the evening petered out
quite naturally, like a sputtering candle or a sinking fire, until
the visitor rose and left with a quiet 'Good night' — leaving
behind the disgruntled but ever-tenacious Wilson — the latch of
the outer door rattling jaggedly in the still night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Time to Go

INSIDE the hut the only sound was the buzzing of flies, that
announced the return of spring. Outside the sunshine was
warm, but a breeze ruffled the sea. A few clouds drifted — oh,
so slowly! — round the rim of the mountain. From the south
window were visible some cottages at the western end of the
village, where the road emerged through a deep cutting behind an
outlying house (Willy Lavarello's, wasn't it?) and wound its way
out towards the Potato Patches. Occasional figures passed along
that road, some of them men, some of them donkeys. Thatch
and grass were bleached, cottages and rocks were the same sad
grey, barely distinguishable one from the other. Those black
holes were doorways and windows. On one of the garden walls
gleamed a white speck — washed stockings, perhaps. And round
the gable-end of a cottage a splodge of green — was it a bush? —
seemed to be creeping furtively. Behind, the slope of loose red
stone and rubble, darkening in places to purple, lay steep against
the wall of the mountain, as if swept there by a giant broom.

It was all so familiar — and tinged lately with a faint nostalgia.
The end of our exile was near. November was our fourteenth
month on the island. Every day now, since a message had come
from the Cape, we looked out to sea with mingled hope and
dread, expecting our relief ship.

179

I 80 ROCK OF EXILE

The seasons had come full circle and we were back in spring.
Through the open door of the hut appeared the sea, broken only
by the black spot of a fishing-dinghy and at intervals the white
plume of a spouting whale. In my ear-phones was the faint,
insistent note of morse, a voice from across the ocean, from a
world thousands of miles away. It seemed incredible that those
tiny sounds could concern us, that listening to them mattered as
much as watching the man in the fishing-dinghy or the boy riding
a donkey along the road — or even the whale white-watering on
the horizon.

Our outlook had veered round to that of the islanders. From
being 'outsiders' we had become participants in the local life —
guilty at times, perhaps, of interfering. Our intimacy with the
villagers carried, especially for them, a penalty. It could not be
kind of us to inspire their affections. We could never really
share their life: we were in danger of intruding into it. The
moment we began to feel the attraction of staying, we knew it was
time for us to go.

We had seen a peaceful community living without crime,
policed only by public opinion ; a people surviving on a monoton-
ous, soft diet, yet with excellent teeth and rugged, healthy
bodies ; a people with almost no variety of amusement, yet con-
tented, even happy. At first they had seemed sombre, a little
forbidding. But the Tristan islanders have been conditioned by
their isolation. Experience has not taught them how to relax
with strangers, to smile with the ready warmth of islanders in the
Pacific or the Caribbean. Too often their shyness makes them
appear grave and aloof. To us they were unfailingly polite, but
there was nothing servile about their readiness to say 'Sir' ; even
among themselves they often used a formality that seemed sur-
prising in a society where all were familiar neighbours. If at
times they fell into the habit of begging from us, it was without
whining or insistence ; and the habit sprang from years of priva-
tion. Coupled with it were traditions of hospitality and
generosity ; if the cottage contained little food, that little must be
given to the visitor and no mention made of the shortage.

TIME TO GO I 8 I

In spite of the inevitable gossip of a tiny settlement, there were
few open quarrels. The only fights we saw were friendly
tussles — such as were a part of the local courting customs.
Fathers were strict and sometimes harsh with their children; but
this no more indicated cruelty than the beating of dogs and
donkeys. Such treatment was in accord with the hard way of
life. The men were equally capable of showing a rough affection
and the family atmospheres were happy. Laughter was much
commoner than we had at first thought. When unselfconscious
the islanders showed a humour that was quick and gay, sometimes
with a keen edge. They had a sharp eye for absurdities, a sense
of the grotesque, in themselves and others; and they often found
the vivid turn of speech to express it.

Above all, they were optimists — for all their dour counten-
ances. Faced with a howling gale, they called it *a good blow' ;
caught in a downpour of rain, they described the weather as
* showery.' This language spoke their contentment; and that
contentment was their greatest danger. Living in isolation they
knew no competition. Everything on the island belonged to
them ; they had no neighbouring community to challenge them —
and therefore no motive for aiming at higher standards. Con-
servatism had become the island disease. The agriculture was
more primitive than it need have been. This was not due
entirely to ignorance and lack of tools. The island men knew
that by varying their crops they could have improved the soil, but
they did not like to make the change — -just as the women did not
like to change from the old, hand- turned spinning-wheels to the
treadle-operated ones that had been sent to them,

The contentment of the islanders led to improvidence. Only a
small portion of the arable land near the settlement was cultivated
and the men rarely planted enough potatoes to meet the possi-
bility of a bad season. The cattle were left to forage for them-
selves through the winter and many of them died because there
was not enough grass. The islanders expected this to happen,
but they trusted that enough animals would survive and that the
spring would bring fresh grass to fatten them. The men had

182 ROCK OF EXILE

killed off all the birds on the main island, so that the grubs had
no enemies and feasted securely on the potatoes. Now the
islanders had to cross to Nightingale and Inaccessible to fetch eggs,
guano, and oil for cooking; yet with the same rashness they were
destroying the bird-life on those islands.

Many of the hardships faced by the village were due to this lack
of concern about the future. The people were fatalists, hoping
for the best but inured to the worst. They greeted all adversities
with the saying: 'We's used to it.' They were used to finding
their crops spoilt by grubs and rats ; they were used to living on
fish when there were no potatoes left — and on nothing when the
sea was too rough for the fishing-boats ; they were used to washing
themselves and their clothes in the cold streams and rubbing their
teeth clean with a rag dipped in brine ; they were used to a fly
plague in the summer and a flea plague all the year ; they were
used to long periods when the world forgot their existence. All
these conditions were tolerable because they were familiar: the
only thing hard to bear was change.

Custom was the ultimate court of appeal. There were no
laws, either written or orally transmitted; but there were
standards. These — perhaps because an offender knew that he
would face not merely the sentence of a single judge but the
opprobrium of a whole society — were more rigid than a formu-
lated code. In a sense many of the islanders were amoral, but
their behaviour accorded with the highest morality. Honesty
was the common policy because deception was hard to conceal.
Promiscuity was rare for the same reason. There was no vice
and no perversion. Venereal disease was as unknown as measles
and scarlet fever. In questions of conduct the individual
succumbed to general opinion. Yet in all practical matters the
islanders were individualists, incapable of corporate action. The
settlement was a republic of the simplest kind, bound by accepted
practice enforced by common consent. It was based* on the
family, but lacked one essential feature — the authority of the
head. The Chief was merely a spokesman: he might command
respect, but not obedience. This was not a personal failing, but

TIME TO GO I 83

a limitation imposed on his office. There was no reason, to the
minds of his fellow colonists, for acknowledging in an elected
one of their own number a wisdom or power transcending theirs.
This insistence on equality often created an impasse when public
action was required. When no one would take the lead or make
the crucial decision the result was inertia.

The islanders were not exactly lazy. They could work hard
enough when they appreciated the need; they would strain for
hours at an oar or heave great stones when building a house:
but they would rarely combine voluntarily in any communal
undertaking. Once by co-operative effort they had built the
church, but only under the direction of a minister. Father
Rogers. During our stay they had worked in gangs under
appointed leaders and even for regular hours. Most of the work
had been for the benefit of the village as much as the station, but
only the authority of the doctor as commanding officer had made
it possible. The result was plain for the islanders to see: they
could achieve far more by such organized activity than by their
unco-ordinated individual efforts. This was one lesson they had
learnt from the Navy.

The settlement owed much in the character and human dignity
of its inhabitants to its traditions of equality and individualism;
but only from regulated labour could it expect better living
conditions — or even survival. If the colony was to continue it
must change. The islanders needed to develop a communal
sense and to embody that in a form of administration acceptable
to them all. Some authority would have to be found after the
war to replace that which the Navy had temporarily provided.
In the past there had been missionaries, to whom the people had
paid a deference denied to the Chief. There would probably be
other missionaries in the future. But it was in secular and
practical matters that guidance and control were most needed.
The example of the station had revealed possibilities to the
islanders — improvements which they themselves could make to
their houses, their sanitation, their farming and social organiza-
tion, if only they could co-ordinate their energies.

I 84 ROCK OF EXILE

The Admiralty had its own motives for maintaining a signal
station on Tristan da Cunha, and the welfare of the islanders,
though it might be considered incidentally, was not among them.
Now that our draft was due to leave, we liked to think that our
presence had conferred some benefit. Other drafts would take
our place, but ours had made the first impact on the island life.
After the end of the war, when the station would be dismantled,
the islanders would never again feel quite so satisfied with their
world. In some ways that dissatisfaction was the best legacy we
could leave them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Day of Departure

WITH all the unexpectedness of an impact that has been too long
awaited, she arrived one morning — the ship that was to bring our
exile to a close, to carry us back to the world of motor-cars,
cinemas, sophistication, and war. Out of the dawn mist of the
first day in December she came upon us, a little tramp steamer
named East Gate, bound from Cape Town to Montevideo. As
soon as she signalled that she carried reliefs for the operators
ashore, we knew that our immediate future was settled. Our
quarters would not accommodate twelve new arrivals and our-
selves, so there could be no question of waiting for a ship from the
west to take us to the Cape: 'Doc' had no alternative but to
request a passage for us aboard the East Gate to South America,
from which we might make our own way back to the naval base in
South Africa or perhaps even directly to England.

The forenoon of that last day was spent by most of our party in
going the round of the village, saying good-bye to the old people,
who could not be on the beach in the afternoon to see us depart.

I 86 ROCK OF EXILE

We paid our farewell visits to Mrs Repetto, Old Sam Swain,
Andrew the fiddler who had enlivened our dances, and others of
the village elders, then we retired each to the cottage he knew
best, to spend the last moments with the islanders who had been
his special friends. Most of the village men were busy all the
morning bringing the stores ashore from the ship. The children
were all down on the cliff-top watching the traffic to and from the
beach. Only the women and the old men remained in the
cottages.

I had always wanted to leave Tristan in sunshine ; and on this
day the sun shone brighter and stronger than on any previous day
of our stay on the island. As I walked through the village, from
the Chief's house up to Old Sam Swain's, I seemed to be seeing it
all for the first time. In the curiously rarefied sunlight every-
thing had an extra sharpness, a tension of outline which made it
appear more immediate, closer, and yet unreal, like a painted
set on a stage. For fourteen months, the grass, the houses, the
streams, the mountainside had been familiar sights. Now I was
perceiving them with a vision that was intense, earnestly so, yet
objective, even detached — in something like that state of brightly
coloured awareness which comes at the end of a dream, when
daylight is already seeping beneath one's eyelids and a tiny flicker
of consciousness is stirring in a corner of one's brain.

As I stood on the slope below Sam's cottage, in the higher part
of the village, the sea glittered below, as if in a great, burnished
bowl. The little steamer appeared absurdly big and close and far
below me, although I was not really high up, and the blue bowl of
the sea seemed tipped upwards at the horizon. Every effect
added to the sense of being an observer, interested but uncon-
cerned in the scene. Reason said that in a few hours I should be
on board that ship, bound for another land, but my feet were still
on familiar turf, my stomach felt no unaccustomed motions and
the rest of my body had as yet no evidence of change.

There was merely a further period of waiting, an extension of
that which had gone on for several weeks. The sea looked bluer
and the grass looked greener than ever before. There was a

DAY OF DEPARTURE 187

poignancy in their brightness that day. The air had a strange
clearness and emptiness, and the rattle of the ship's winch filled
the whole of the world with its noise.

The women were more affected by our coming departure than
the men. Most of the girls were in tears and many of their
mothers on the verge of them. Charlotte's coarse features were
red and puffy. I had lunch at David Hagan's house and contrived
to be alone with his daughter for a few futile moments of farewell.
I was given a knitted 'ganzey' that had been hurriedly finished in
time for the occasion and which, after its final washing, had been
lying out to dry on the wall of the house enclosure all the
morning.

Shortly after midday the relief-party, which seemed in no
hurry to set foot on Tristan, came ashore and made our acquain-
tance. Their first impressions of the island seemed to depress
them. During the afternoon took place the general migration to
Big Beach to watch our departure. Little Joseph Glass and his
brother Conrad carried my kit down to the beach. All the
women and children were assembled there. There was another
period of waiting. Gaeta's wife said it was the hottest day she
could remember on Tristan. The sand scorched the feet of the
dogs so that they yelped in pain and ran back up the cliff road to
the grass. It burned even through our shoes and must have been
almost intolerable to the islanders in their thin moccasins. Some
of the men were still making journeys to the ship in their boats,
others stood on the beach, waiting. The women formed them-
selves into orderly ranks and sat, in utter silence, waiting, on the
hot, black sand. They all wore their best dresses, and the little
girls had on their coloured sashes and white 'kappies.'

Since we were leaving the sooner we got aboard the ship
the better. Yet, for some unformulated reason, we too were
waiting. At length, when we considered that most of the stores
were ashore and after all of our heavier kit had gone out to the
ship, wre began the ordeal of leave-taking. The women stood up,
still in their brightly coloured rows. Passing among them, we
received a kiss and a hand-shake from each and said good-bye.

I 8 8 ROCK OF EXILE

All tears were suppressed now and only an occasional sob dis-
torted a farewell smile. Conscientiously, but a little hurriedly,
we moved from one bright dress to another, like bees passing
along rows of sweet-peas. Faces went by like blossoms, some
dark, some pale, hardly distinguishable one from another.
Sometimes the wrong name was attached to one : I said * Good-
bye, Lily' to Violet, forgetting that I had already kissed her
sister's face. Somewhere among them I found Emily's lips,
but they were gone before I realized it and others imprinted in
their place. Then we shook hands with the men on the beach
and scrambled into one of the waiting boats, suddenly intent on
getting ourselves and our personal belongings safely and quickly
on board the ship. The actual departure was completed in a few
bewildering minutes. Was that Joe Repetto pushing the boat
out? There was Gaeta on the beach now! Wave to Gaeta!
Joe leaping into the boat as we rode clear of the shingle. Afloat.
Too late! Should not set foot on that beach again. Too deep
already even to jump out and wade ashore, if I wanted to. We
had departed.

But having done that we still took a long time to get away
from the island . Slowly the boat was brought round , just beyond
the surf, and Joe rigged the rudder .and tiller, taking his time
while we rocked among the kelp. We all watched him intently,
not looking back at the beach. Then the chuck of oars started
and we moved into the middle of the kelp-reef. I had to look
back now, but it wasn't possible to see properly so long as a thick,
golden mist kept quivering before my eyes. Rapid blinking
seemed to clear the mist. The watchers on the beach were all
very still, the women sitting again in their gaily dressed rows, as if
waiting primly to be photographed. None of them waved or
cheered. They just sat watching. All looked very much alike,
young and old. But there was one at the end of a row, in a white
dress with a red kerchief, bright red, over smooth, dark hair.
She sat perfectly still, staring back until she became a white blur.
Then her head went down, and the woman behind her — a large
one in widow's black — put a hand on her shoulder.

DAY OF DEPARTURE l8g

I sat near Joe Repetto in the stem, and he turned to me and
said: 'You-all got a foine day for to leave the hoighland!5 I
swallowed something that seemed the size of a petrel's egg before
replying. From now on we all looked steadily ahead at the ship
we were approaching. The island men were never very talkative
in the boats.

It was about three-thirty in the afternoon when we climbed the
ship's ladder. We had expected her to be getting under way
almost at once. What we had not counted on was being on
board, within half a mile of the beach until well after dusk, with
nothing to look at but the island and with the island boats still
coming off to carry stores to the beach. We went below, we
stored our belongings, we made tea, we came up on deck again.
The island was- still there. Slowly the sun sank on the clearest,
warmest day we had known there. Across the dark void in the
mountain rim at the top of Hottentot Gulch a white bird sailed
gracefully. It reminded me of the white dress that I had seen
months earlier, fluttering among the rocks high up on the slope.
That dress ! I had caught up with it, but where was it now? If
anything moved at all on the island, it was no longer visible to us.

As the sun set by Inaccessible, it stained the sea red, and the
whole rugged face of Tristan seemed splashed with a crimson dye.
Gradually the colour darkened and the tiny houses faded into the
black shape of the mountain, looming upwards in the dusk.
Several of us stood at the rail of the ship, staring for a long time to
see a light from the cottages. David's house, being white and in
the foreground, remained visible after the others, then slowly
faded, as if passing out of existence. We kept on staring. From
the station, where the newcomers were settling in, lights
occasionally pierced the black-out. From the village not a
glimmer! Perhaps, however, from behind those dark windows,
eyes watched as the ship at last stole away into the night.

A strange night it was for us, alternating between periods of
wild hilarity, down in our new mess, with the prospect of shore
leave in South America, of our return to the blessed debauch of
civilization, and periods of heavy silence, during which figures

190 ROCK OF EXILE

climbed the companion-way from the lighted mess and stood or
paced in the warm darkness on deck, with the cooling breeze in
their faces and the sea rushing under the guard-rail. At such
moments, standing alone, I was conscious of a dull pressure that
seemed to be located on the left front of my blue jersey. I recog-
nized it as the impress of a dark head that generally rested there
at this time in the evening. The feeling was definitely a pressure,
not an ache — but a pressure of emptiness, rather like a dent that
remains when the weight that caused it has gone. I almost
believed that when I went below and removed the jersey, the
dent might be straightened out and the pressure would be felt
no more.

We were organized into watches, with the ship's company,
and after a few restless hours in a strange bunk, I found myself
keeping the morning look-out in the port after gun-pit. It was
breezy up there. We were steaming almost due west, and as the
grey eye of dawn peered bleakly over the horizon astern, it threw
startlingly into relief the peak of Tristan, still visible in our wake.
It looked small and incredibly alone. A rock in the sea. Did
people really live on that rock? It seemed as remote from us,
from myself, as from the rest of the world. And then I saw
myself stepping among familiar boulders, through an opening in a
stone wall, and up the worn steps to a cottage door ; I saw myself
sitting beside a wide hearth where a pot of water was boiling over
a wood-fire; I saw a girl standing beside a table, taking a large
safety-pin from her sash to prick up the wick of a little bird-oil
lamp, so that its light glowed on her face; I saw her move to the
fire, crouching on her heels, and I felt her hand rest on my knee
while she leaned forward to blow up the smoking sticks beneath
the pot. As she turned her face upwards and smiled, the light
danced in her dark eyes. The smoke swirled in front of her face,
hiding it, filling the whole room, causing my eyes to smart.
Then the breeze, up there in the gun-pit, blew the smoke away,
and when I looked again the peak was fading from view as the sun
rose above it. That was at about five o'clock in the morning —
the last time I saw the rock.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Past and Present

WE LEFT Tristan da Cunha on ist December 1943. Nothing
could have been more final than our departure. At first a few
letters, inadequately addressed in large, child-like handwriting,
followed us about the world, miraculously surviving the hazards
of war to catch up with members of our party in distant places.
But it was impossible for us to keep in touch, either with one
another or with the islanders. Other countries and other ex-
periences enveloped us; other drafts took our place on Tristan,
absorbing the interests of the inhabitants.

After the war changes came to the island, at first retrogression
and then progress. The naval outpost was vacated, though the
main group of buildings was left standing. The weather station
remained, staffed by meteorologists from South Africa. As in
earlier days, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel sent
out a missionary ; but he now lived in the wooden house that had
been occupied by the naval chaplain, instead of in the old
missionary' s cottage, long derelict. What had been our mess and
recreation room became the social hall and the school, supervised
by the missionary and his wife. For a while conditions were
almost the same as before the war. The men fished and grew
potatoes, the women carded, spun, and knitted. Local affairs
revolved around the church and the 'ministah.' But because the

191

I 92 ROCK OF EXILE

meteorological station had to maintain wireless communication
with the Cape the island did not resume the complete isolation
it had once known.

In 1947 the Soviet Antarctic Whaling Fleet put in there and
exchanged stores for cattle, fish, and sheep. Bartering from
whale-ships had been the old practice ; but just as the present was
settling into a likeness of the past the settlement discovered a new
future. In 1948 an organization was formed in South Africa
called the Tristan da Cunha Development Company. Marine
biologists have declared that the main breeding-grounds of what
the islanders call 'crawfish' are in the waters about Tristan and
Gough Island ; and there is a demand for frozen and canned craw-
fish— the commodity is called rock lobster — in France and the
U.S.A. The new company set up a canning shed or * factory' on
Tristan. A little refrigerated ship, Tristania, began to ply
regularly between the island and the Cape. Now there are two
ships. They spend the southern summer fishing near Tristan.
The island men assist, some working with the crews of the ships,
others operating from the shore, still using their canvas-covered
boats. The women do the canning in the shed on Big Beach.

The company has now come under the control of the Colonial
Development Corporation, which keeps a small staff continuously
on the island and maintains a non-profit store, at which the
islanders spend their wages ; for currency has been introduced.
This last innovation is bound to have mixed results. It enables
the people to buy clothing and hardware and to vary their fish
and potato diet with potted food-stuffs; it may also widen the
gulfs between families, making sharper divisions between rich
and poor. Already the change of diet has introduced decay to
the islanders' teeth, once almost perfect.

As during our stay, the station has its own little community
separate from the settlement but closely associated with it. In
the cluster of wooden houses, distinct from the cottages, now
live an administrator, appointed by the Colonial Service, the
fish company staff, the missionary, a doctor, a nursing sister,
an agriculturist — and, of course, wives and sometimes children.

PAST AND PRESENT 193

The administrator presides over most matters of island
organization, but under his direction the Village Council — now
regularly elected — continues to meet, and the headman, still
Willy Repetto, acts as spokesman of local opinion. There is still
no need for a policeman or a jailhouse.

The school, named St Mary's after the church, has been placed
in the charge of a professional schoolmaster and his wife. The
standard of education among the young people — on which the
future of the settlement largely depends — has risen. The school
staff even includes as pupil teacher Miss Trena Glass, known to us
during the war as a little, fair-haired child, Sidney's daughter.

Having learnt the lesson of working in teams for the com-
munity, the island men have made improvements in the settle-
ment. They have prepared a site for the erection of a new
village hall, prefabricated in England. They have extended the
church to accommodate the growing congregation. Cement
pillars now support a roof joining the original part to the new
section. The building has been redecorated and has a new altar
cloth, pews, and kneelers, supplied from England. Many of the
people have bought hymn and prayer books through the store.
The parish has been transferred from the diocese of St Helena to
that of Cape Town, and last year the Archbishop of Cape Town
was taken by H. M.S. Magpie to visit the island. He conducted a
confirmation service in the village church. The total population,
which presumably still includes the rival congregation of Agnes
Rogers, now numbers just over 2^0.

Since 195-3 the British Government has maintained a doctor, a
nurse, and an agriculturist on Tristan. Among improvements
being made under their influence are a small hospital, a piped
water supply to the cottages, a drainage system, and sanitary
installations at St Mary's School. A small reafforestation scheme
has been started at Sandy Point. A young pure-bred Hereford
bull, a ram, and two sheep-dogs have been introduced to improve
the local strains. In addition to his other work, the agriculturist
deals with the increasing amount of postal business. A series of
stamps ranging from a halfpenny in value to ten shillings has been

194 ROCK OF EXILE

printed. They show pictures of island scenes : St Mary's Church,
the Potato Patches, Nightingale, Inaccessible, the little flightless
rail to be found only on the latter island, Tristan itself, a group
of mollymawks — and the new fish-canning factory on Big Beach.

In 1955 a group of young scientists, the Cambridge University
Expedition to Gough Island, called at Tristan and stayed six
weeks, surveying and making recordings of local songs and the
voices of some of the islanders. The information they have
brought back shows that in spite of the new establishments the
island way of life has changed very little. The men still find time,
between spells of fishing for the company, to cultivate their
patches, haul stone in their bullock carts, build their rough-hewn
cottages and thatch them with flax. The women still card and
spin and knit. The old persists beside the new. Housewives
buy new material, which they make up into old-style dresses, only
slightly shorter; they still wear head scarves, since hats would be
useless in the high winds. Shoes for men and women are sold in
the store. For climbing and beach work the men still wear
moccasins. But on Sundays they attend church in a rustic
Victorian formality of dark suits, caps, and black shoes.

Most of the cottages have been equipped with new beds and
many have small cooking-stoves, but the open hearth remains the
source of warmth and the centre of domestic comfort. Wood
for fuel is as hard to find as ever — though as recently as 195-3 a
ship, the yacht Coimbra, joined the long tally of vessels wrecked
on Tristan. Peat is nowadays used occasionally for fuel. Bird-
oil lamps survive but are often replaced by candles bought at the
store. The station is lit, for a short period of the evening only,
by electricity, supplied from a dynamo as when the Navy was in
occupation. The greatest incongruity described by the visiting
scientists is the sight of a wireless loud-speaker in the living-room
of every cottage. The wonder of radio, which we took to
Tristan, has ceased to be a marvel. But it is apparently used as
much for listening to local radio-telephony conversations as for
hearing broadcasts from 'outside.' The centre of the islanders'
world is still the island itself. The strength of that interest has

PAST AND PRESENT I 9 £

still to be tested against the influences that may arrive with the
newly purchased film-projector to be installed in the village hall.

About the individual islanders known to us during die war a
few scraps of gossip have floated across the years. Widowhood
proved a deceptive blessing to Mrs Repetto and Charlotte Glass:
both are dead. The former is commemorated in the name of the
second ship bought by the Development Company, the Frances
Repetto. The present headwoman is Martha Rogers, a daughter
of Mrs Repetto. To us Martha never seemed a separate person
so much as a part of the husband and wife unit always referred to
as 'Arfa 'n Marfa'; but that combination, though childless, was
one of the most respected in the village.

Old Sam Swain failed in his ambition of equalling the long life
of his grandfather: he died at a mere ninety-two. The oldest
inhabitant is now Tom Rogers, aged eighty-four. In 1955 Big
John Glass, the last surviving grandson of the original founder of
the settlement, died in his eighties. Henry Green, Gaeta, and
the other 'old hands' have all gone. But the young people
prosper and multiply. Wilson received the just reward for his
tolerance of a rival and his submission to scorn: he lost the girL
Kenneth Rogers, with more certainty of what he wanted and
more determination to secure it, stepped in and married Emily.
Each was for the other the best partner the island could offer.
Among the recordings made by the Gough Expedition and
included in a B. B.C. broadcast was the cheerful voice of a young
woman 'with a nice face' — Mrs Emily Rogers,

As consolation prize Wilson gained Kenneth's sister, Marie.
He is now a respected member of the Village Council. Once a
loosely tied cardboard box, which had pursued-me to more places
than I had visited, found its way to my home in England. It con-
tained a model island boat made by Wilson as a reminder of the
'good times' we had together in the evenings at David's. Along
with the 'ganzey' that Emily finished on our last day there; and
a pair of moccasins that Kenneth sent before his marriage, telling
me that they were almost as 'fancy' as the pair he was making for

196 ROCK OF EXILE

Emily ; and a set of rather undersized tusks from the sea-elephant
killed by Bunty and 'Twin/ it forms my collection of curios.
As evidence they are no more convincing than the objects I saw
long ago in the museum at Cape Town. The island, with its
handful of exiles, seems as unreal now as it did then. Its very
existence is an anachronism.

When, in January 1957, the royal yacht Britannia took a
second Duke of Edinburgh to visit the settlement named after
his predecessor, the world was jogged in its memory. News-
papers showed scenes and even a face or two half recognized by
a few people in England. For a moment of history Tristan da
Cunha emerged from the mist, then faded again — an island out
of time, a rock in the sea, a mere spot on the map.

dition, without doctor or dentist but with-
out toothache or disease, makes fascinat-
ing reading.

The story is told by a young English
schoolmaster with a Dutch name who
spent fourteen months on the island as one
of a group of Naval telegraphers manning
a signal station during World War II.

Those who really "want-to-get-away-
from-it-all" should consider the possibili-
ties of this Rock of Exile; those who prefer
their travel in an armchair will find this
book a rewarding experience.

With 15 pages of photographs, a map and
line drawings.